


The Gas Station

by HRogge (The_Fenspace_Collective)



Series: To Boldly Go Where Other Fen Have Gone Before [2]
Category: Fenspace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-08
Updated: 2013-11-10
Packaged: 2018-01-01 01:59:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 27,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1038993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Fenspace_Collective/pseuds/HRogge





	1. Chapter 1

**November 2017**

Two men were sitting on a console in the large control room of ESA in Darmstadt.

“You think we will be able do this?”

“Yes, I think so. As long as the governments back in Brussels don’t do something stupid, we will go through the mission as planned.”

“Do you think the US will protest again?”  
“No, they did not protest that much when we finished the fourth ISV.”

“Is everything assembled at our depot?”

“Yes, the last checks were completed three days ago. All astronauts have been sent up and everyone is just waiting for the ‘go’ signal.”

* * *

In the first half of 2017 the four Interplanetary Space Vehicles of ESA and JAXA had been sent on several smaller missions to Venus and the Belt. The longest mission had been the voyage of the ISV Nobu Shirase around Saturn. ESA had called it an endurance test and dropped a number of scientific satellites around the planet, but called the ISV back home soon after.

But after this none of the spaceships had left ESAs space depot again. Some people said ESA and JAXA were tired with senseless flying around. Others said, the EU governments were not willing to pay for it anymore.

But the second step on ESAs “10 year plan to get back into space” began exactly as the last step. In the middle of a storm of reporters, camera flashes flickering off like lightning without thunder.

ESAs press speaker and the representative of JAXA were grinning into the cameras, it was time to hit the naysayer with another club on the head. And he would hit them hard!

“Welcome ladies and gentlemen.” he started with a smile.

“In the last six months since our flyby mission around Saturn there have been voices that said the cooperation between ESA and JAXA has burned out. That we are without a goal to reach. Today you are here to learn that nothing could be further from the truth.”

He looked to his Japanese colleague, which continued.

“When the Thor Heyerdahl came back from Mars, we had proven that the solar system is still open for exploration, even without Handwavium. But as important as this, we also showed everyone the potential of Fusion reactor JAXA provided for the spaceship. After we returned several governments approached our consortium to see how fast we could build a reactor to supply electrical power to them. There was only one problem. The supply of Helium-3!”

Several reporters nodded. The debate about Nuclear Fusion had heated up since the first prototype of the Honda Fusion Reactor two years ago, but died down soon after. The problem was that to get a pure aneutronic fusion reaction, you had to use pure Helium-3 as fuel. Digging over thousands of square miles on the Moon to mine it was out of question, so the only source were some Fen who did the insane job to dive with their ships into Jupiter to get it.

And nobody wanted to make their power generation totally dependent on the goodwill of a few Fen.

“We all know the discussions about Lunar sources of Helium-3, but to say it again, it will not happen. The Moon is not empty anymore, and the amount of Helium-3 in the dust is just too small.”

The ESA press speaker nodded to his colleague.

“ESA and JAXA have been in contact with our governments for a proposal to fix this problem. Since then, we have shipped hundreds of tons of steel and ceramic up to our orbital depot, together with the finest hightech our countries can provide. A group of forty astronauts are waiting in orbit to begin the largest space mission Europe and Japan have ever done before. We decided to call the mission ‘Aurora’.”

The room was filled with quiet murmurs now while everyone was trying to guess what was going on. Behind the two speakers, a large monitor activated, showing the image of the planet Saturn with the title ‘Aurora 2018’.

“Aurora’s main goal is to allow the commercial use of fusion reactors for clean and cheap energy! This evening, the Thor Heyerdahl, the Leif Erickson, the Nobu Shirase and the Ferdinand Magellan will depart from our depot and will be heading for Saturn. They will be carrying the first pieces of equipment to set up a permanent space station there, where some of the brightest engineers of our countries will live. If everything will go according to plan, we will deliver the first batch of Helium-3 within 12 months.”

“Why Saturn? Isn’t this awful far away?” one of the reporters asked.

“There are three planets where one could mine Helium-3 in the solar system if you don’t want to dig through millions of tons of lunar rocks. Jupiter, Saturn or Uranus. 

Uranus is too far away for our current ISVs, we cannot get there and back without refueling, which make missions to Uranus too dangerous currently.

Jupiter is a lot closer than Saturn, but it has also a much higher mass, which makes it harder to get into a low orbit and back out of it.

The decision to build the station around Saturn was made as a compromise between distance and depth of the gravity well. The fact that one of the larger Fen factions have their capital there makes it a safer neighborhood too.”

* * *

“Darmstadt Control, this is the Thor Heyerdahl. Mission checks have been completed, all four ships are reporting condition green. We are ready for the phase one of the mission.”

“Thor Heyerdahl, this is Darmstadt Control. Mission countdown restarted at T minus 15 minutes, prepare for staged launch sequence.”

After the flight of the Thor Heyerdahl ESA and JAXA had decided to change the design of their new spaceships. Armed with the data gathered during the long flight, several small had been made to the engine section of the ship. Simultaneously they had cut the Thor Heyerdahl into four parts, connected by large docking rings.

As her sister ships, the Heyerdahl now were made up by an front crew section and an aft engine section. Depending on the mission different cargo or carrier modules could be placed between crew and engine section, together with one or multiple modules for carrying reaction mass.

All four ISVs had been equipped with a large cargo and a single reaction mass module, which allowed each of the ISVs to transport a total of one hundred metric tons of cargo to Saturn. And each of them was filled with equipment up to the limit.

‘And that’s just the first part of the cargo. We will have to come back to get the second part afterwards’ the captain of the Thor Heyerdahl thought.

‘When we are finished, the new station will be twice as large as the ISS. I wonder how long it took ESA and JAXA to carry all this mass up to the space depot. If this mission does not succeed, it will be one of the most expensive failures in the history of spaceflight.’

Fenspace owned surface orbital transportation had made spaceflight a lot cheaper than a decade ago, but this expedition was still expensive as hell.

But pushed by the increasing oil and gas prices and the sometimes less than reliable sources for both the EU and Japan were looking hard for other energy sources.

The radio speakers went active again.

“Thor Heyerdahl, this is Darmstadt. You are green for leaving orbit, we expect you back in two months. Gute Reise!”

Eric Hunt grinned.

“Thank you Darmstadt. We are beginning with the staged launch” he said and turned to the pilot of the Thor Heyerdahl.

“Mrs Meier, get us out of here.”

The woman at the control panel nodded. “Aye aye captain, all engines switching to ECON mode.”

Instantly the freefall in the ship was replaced by a tenth Earth gravity as the ship accelerated forward.

* * *

The Thor Heyerdahl felt crowded for the first time of its existence. The ship had more room for the crew than any other hardtech spacecraft before, but with a full crew of ten people on a voyage that would take nearly a month it was not really that comfortable.

After eight hours of flight, the ship had left the Earth-Moon system and was heading for deep interplanetary space.

“That’s it, we are out of the crowded region” Eric Hunt said and opened his seatbelt. “Mrs Meier, please tell our escort from Space Patrol we are grateful they made sure our flight corridor was free.”

He stretched and then turned on the intercom.

“Okay, everyone listen up. We have have reached interplanetary space, the autopilot will take over for the next two weeks. Mr. Soetsu, please do a full diagnosis on the reactor and our engine systems, I want to know if everything is running well. The rest of you will do a checkup of the whole ship including the cargo rooms. If something got loose, we should fix it now before we get into trouble. I want to send a report back to Earth within the next two hours!”

“Mrs. Meier, you have the watch. Keep an eye on the sensors and call me if we get visitors.”

The Thor Heyerdahl suddenly was filled with activity, as the crew began to move through all parts of the ship to check the crew module and the cargo space.

“Crew quarters are okay.”

“Living room is okay.”

“Entertainment system looks okay.”

Eric sighed, some of the crew were really fanatic in this regard.

“Engines and Reactor within expected parameters,” the message he had waited for arrived, “fuel and reaction mass without leakage or problems.”

“Thank you Mr. Soetsu, good to hear that. I will be in my room preparing the report for Earth.”

When the door to the cockpit closed again, the ships engineer Masuno Soetsu looked at Sarah Meier.

“Do you have a clue why he is that tense? I mean, we will be sitting in this tin can for a whole month, with nothing to do except for checking if the ship is still there!”

“He is most times this way, have known him for years” Sarah replied, “he says that sticking to the rules is the key to success. It will get better when we are a few days away from Earth I hope.”

“If you say so.”

* * *

“And the king stays on the hill again, as always!”

Masuno Soetsu was in a great mood. It was the twelfth day of their travel towards Saturn, and the fourth of their local gaming competitions. While ESA’s budget had been strained for years, they had seen the need to keep the crew of the ship busy.

Which meant that the five small cabins of the Thor Heyerdahl were each equipped with a state of the art gaming console. Luckily he had brought a number of recent games with him from Japan.

“Damned, do you really only have this shooter games with you Masuno? It would really be great  
to play some other games together.”

ESA and JAXA had supplied them with a fine collection of games. Unfortunately somehow they had forgotten to give each system the same games, which made multiplayer tournaments difficult.

“Hey,” Masuno replied with a grin, “you should be thankful that I remembered to buy five copies of each of my games, otherwise we still wouldn’t have five player games!”

“Maybe we should contact the other ISVs what games they have? Maybe we can trade!”

“People, calm down a little bit” Eric Hunt said, “we are less than three weeks away from Saturn, you can ask the rest of the ISVs about their games when we arrive. The Fen might even borrow you some game consoles, because the consoles are NOT meant to be removed from the ship. Oh, and without Internet access to Earth, you cannot modify the software.”

“This stupid online DRM” someone murmured.

A few hours later most of the Thor Heyerdahl’s crew was asleep, only Sarah Meier had ‘night’ shift in the cockpit.

She looked over her email for the last time, then turned on the communication console. After a short series of commands, the ships directional radio antenna turned away from Earth and sent out a high powered digital burst of data.

* * *

The Thor Heyerdahl was racing through Interplanetary Space, accelerating towards it target at Saturn. Tomorrow the ship would finally reach the midpoint of the journey and it would spend the rest of the way flying backward and braking to get into the desired orbit around the ringed planet.

Captain Hunt was sitting in the cockpit, watching a video message from Earth.

“Captain Hunt, this is Kurt Coller.”

‘Oha’ Hunt thought as the video continued, ‘the boss at Mission Control itself is calling me.’

“I would like to inform you that ESA and JAXA have agreed to allow an interview about your flight on board of the Thor Heyerdahl. Two days before you reach Pan a ship with someone from Port Luna will meet you.”

‘Reporter? Aprils fools day?’ flashed through Hunts mind.

“According to our mission planning, you should be down to maneuvering speed and preparing for transferring to an orbit around Pan, which will make docking easier. The ship of the reporter has an ESA certified airlock adapter and enough space for up to four people. We will send you a detailed report about the ship attached to this video message.

I know this is an unusual thing, but showing some good will in this interview might help us to get better relations to the Fen, which will be very important in the next years of your mission.

Kurt Coller out.”

‘At least I got a warning’ Hunt thought and sighed. He wondered if there was any kind of job left on Earth where you could not be ambushed by a reporter. But then a knocking at the cockpit doors made him turn around.

“Mrs Meier, still up that late?”

“Yes... I just a reply to an email I sent a few days ago and wanted to talk with you about it.”

Eric Hunt smiles and pointed at the empty copilot seat.

“Just sit down, I always have time for my crew.”

“You know, a major problem out here in the middle of nothing is signal delay” Sarah began to explain, “it is a headache if something bad should happen and it is also an inconvenience for communicating with Earth.”

Eric Hunt just nodded.

“When we were at Mars last year, I gave the video disk I brought from Earth to one of the Trekkies as a gift. We talked quite a lot over the next days and he said I should call him when I am in space again.”

“So you sent him a mail?” Eric Hunt asked, “Did you got a reply?”

“Yes, I got a reply... I had told him about our travel and about some of the changes they made to the Thor Heyerdahl compared to our visit on Mars. He said that he would still owe me for my present and he will send us a mobile wifi access point.”

“A what?” Eric said a little bit confused. “I hope you will explain him that there is a no handwavium policy for the ships of our mission. But I still do not know what we should do with anything like this.”

Sarah grinned.

“It seems the Trekkies built a few drones with integrated Wifi and Interwave. Its a small automated spaceship that will follow us and give us faster than light communication! Even with Earth!”

Eric Hunt first instinct cried ‘no way’, but he took his time to think about the situation.

“So you say its a personal gift from someone else... it contains Handwavium, but it will stay away from our ship. We don’t have to modify anything here, but we get a faster connection to Earth.” He scratched his head. “And we might count it as working on our connections to the Fen on Mars?”

“Yes, exactly!” Sarah replied.

“I am pretty sure there will be some politicians back on Earth that will not be that happy if the hear it, but...”

Sarah blinked a few times, “but?”

“... but as you mentioned they are not here and there is quite a communication delay. I am pretty sure Mr. Coller will be delighted to be able to work around this cage of rules. Just do not mention it directly in the reports, right? We might be in some trouble otherwise.”


	2. Chapter 2

**December 2017**

From the outside it was just a standard Whistler ‘space worthy’ container, one of thousands that existed in Fenspace which had been converted into an improvised living space. No windows, a single airlock to move a small car in and a few rooms in the back of the container.

The interior of the Green Thumb, as the container was called by its inhabitants, was a mess. Boxes of Ninjaburgers fast food were laying between the monitors on the table, in a corner there was a box of dirty clothing. On the wall there was a poster with the slogan ‘Save Earth, not wreck Mars!”, just between two racks with potted plants.

A woman with green hair was sitting in front of one of the monitors, watching to a series of Interwave news sites in quick succession and making some notes on a data pad. Then the door towards garage opened and a man entered the room.

"Hi, Alexander, good to see you back again," she said, not even looking up from the screen. "Hope you brought some good news."

"No," he answered. "Not at all... in fact, I got some damn scary news from one of my contacts. Wake Norman up, would you? I want to tell you both at once."

The woman looked up. “Is it really that urgent? I am just fine tuning our memetic campaign against the Mars terraforming, I have a great idea how to make it work!”

Alexander sighed, Miriam had been working on her ‘campaign’ for more than a year... without any effect or reaction.

“Wake him up, I got some news about what’s happening at Saturn. It is not looking good.”

Miriam rolled her eyes as she got up and went to one of the doors in the back of the room. “Norman, time to get up... Alex is back and he has something important to say.”

It took a minute until a sleepy looking man came through the door.

“I hope this is important” he said and looked at his watch, “I told Miriam I am dead tired three hours ago.”

“Calm down Norman, I have got something important about the ESA mission on Saturn. It seems one of my contacts not only managed to get a scan of the ESA vessels, but also heard some insider rumors” Alexander replied and began to push pizza boxes away that were blocking their holo projector.

“As you see” he said and activated the projector, “the ships of the ESA are built from four different sections... Control, Cargo, Reaction Mass and Engine. I assume that the Patrol didn’t do more than a quick lock on the cargo section, they think ESA is much too tame for anything bad.”

“Yeah, and within this cargo sections they carry the equipment to plunder Nature’s resources at Saturn” Miriam said with a worried look. “They already wrecked one planet, now they are extending to the rest of the solar system!”

“We know that the Patrol and the Convention are scared. The thing that Europe calls an “ion engine” is probably the most powerful particle beam weapon Fenspace has ever seen. And if my contact is right, they even plan to get more weapons to Saturn.”

Norman looked up. “More weapons?”

“Yes, more weapons” Alexander continued, “as soon as their station is finished, they will arm it step by step. In a few years they will annex the whole Saturn region so they can exploit it without being disturbed.”

“And when the Convention finally learns what they are doing it will be too late, even if they decide to do something at all” Miriam added.

“Maybe we should try to force the issue before Europe has the chance to arm their station?” Norman suggested.

Alexander nodded. “Thats an interesting idea... wait, didn’t you said you knew a Mad that is supportive to our mission? Maybe you can ask him for some support?”

“I am not sure, but I can try. Give me a few days to contact him.”

* * *

A video stream activated, showing a small cockpit with a lot of screens and buttons. The camera showed two people, a men in an ESA coverall and a woman wearing a Fen spacesuit. On the edge of the screen a third seat is visible, another woman in ESA coverall is keeping an eye on the console in front of her.

“Good morning ladies and gentlemen, this is Maico Tange.

I am speaking today with Mr. Eric Hunt, captain of the spaceship Thor Heyerdahl. Mr. Hunt, how are you feeling now that you finally arrived in the orbit of Saturn ?”

Eric Hunt smiled.

“It is a great feeling coming here and enjoying this incredible look of Saturn and its rings. I mean, when I joined ESA, the thought about going to the Moon or to Mars was ridiculous. And now we are here in the Orbit around Saturn with 40 astronauts. That’s incredible!”

Maico nodded.

“Yes, of course. I don’t think any hardtech spaceship except the ISV Nobu Shirase during its flyby mission ever got that far. So what do Europe and Japan are doing that far from home?”

“We were sent to Saturn to setup a permanent station here. Both Europe and Japan are still looking for a clean energy source, we think that the same fusion technology used for the Thor Heyerdahl could also be the key to the energy problem.”

“So you are here to look for Helium-3” Maico replied, “that is quite a challenge without any involvement of Handwavium. Unless the restrictions for your civil space agencies on Earth have been lifted for this mission.”

“No, they have not been lifted. You are correct that this mission might be a greater challenge to ESA and JAXA than any before, but I am sure we can do it. We have all the basic parts with us to start with the station, and will get two additional supply runs in the next twelve months.”

Maico raised an eyebrow.

“That’s quite a lot of material, twelve hangars full of building materials. Tell me, where around Saturn will your new station be floating, I expect that quite a few of my viewers will be interested in watching you building it or visiting you later.”

“The station will be underground in the Saturn moon Pan, inside the rings of Saturn. Its the closest place to the planet where the station is protected from stellar radiation and meteor impacts.”

“Pan?”

“The closest moon of Saturn, a block of ice maybe 30 km in length. As soon as we arrive there and get the fusion reactor of the station up and running, we will begin to melt holes into the ice to put the station into. This will make extending the station later much easier than on an asteroid and still gives us a lot protection.”

“So that’s why all the catgirls are waiting here for you?”

The camera turned to a window of the Thor Heyerdahl for a moment, showing the large space station of Catgirl Industries floating in some distance. In the background a person sighs.

“Oh, we just hired a group of Fen for support during the first setup phase of the station. It gives us a place to live while we are working on Pan and makes the whole mission a lot safer.”

“Of course,” Maico answered and turns towards the camera. 

“So ESA and JAXA will be quite busy building their new ice station on Saturn in the coming year. This is Maico Tange, hope to see you on my next interview.”

Somewhere, a billion kilometers away from the Thor Heyerdahl a man switched off his TV set and grabbed his phone.

“Get me the Director General of ESA... yes, now... no, I don’t care if he is at mission control at the moment, get him to a phone... NOW!”

* * *

“I told you we should have waited for the reporter before flying to Pan.”

“Yes, you did... four times!” Eric Hunt said and looked to Sarah. “But that would have delayed our flight plan for an unknown amount of time. And if the reporter just had waited here at Pan, it would have been no use at all.”

Everyone in the cockpit became silent.

“So why are you annoyed about the interview Eric?” Sarah asked, “I mean I think it was quite nice.”

“Yes, nice... but I really would have preferred that these women would not have spelt out for everyone that ESA and JAXA hired a station of biomodded catgirls as a support base” Eric tried to explain. “I have not read the proposals by ESA to the EU council, but some of these guys can barely tolerate the Fen. There is no way they would have agreed to this mission if they knew about the catgirls.”

“You mean they didn’t tell them?”

“Not directly Masuno, not directly. Most likely they buried the name of the catgirls company in some appendix document, together with a few thousand other details they would never read.” Eric sighed. “But I hope everyone recognizes what this means for us.”

Masuno Soetsu blinked and looked a bit puzzled, but Sarah Meier nodded.

“Yes... it seems not a single person involved in this project gave them a hint. At least the upper planning level would have known about this Fen involvement. Oh, and all of the crew too!” she said. “Which means we have some petty and powerful persons waiting for us to get back into their reach to punish us for betraying them.”

Eric suppressed a smile, it was good to know that at least some of his crew were able to see this political minefield.

“Exactly. So either we come back successful as heros or we screw up and get fired by the influence of some pissed string pullers. Powerful motivator for this mission. But that’s enough talk, we just have two hours left until landing. Check the ship for the last time, I do not want to hear a ‘but we hadn’t noticed’ later.”

Masuno grinned. “And after that we go and meet the catgirls!”

* * *

The Thor Heyerdahl and the other ISVs had finally landed on Pan. It had taken the ships hours to slowly approach the North pole of the small moon and finally land on it. Pan’s gravity was nearly non-existent, so the ships had been carefully lowered directly on the icy surface.

The crews had swarmed out to secure their crafts on the ice with hooks and special rope. After that, the cargo of all four ISVs had been unloaded and also secured on the surface of the moon, in a safe distance to the ships.

“Mira, are you still watching them?”

Mira looked up from the blanket she was laying on to the other catgirl and nodded.

“Yes, its fun to watch them... look at all the things they brought here. That must be hundreds of tons of cargo. And they said that this is only a third of their total building material.” Mira smiled. “I wonder if we are allowed to look at the things they will install in their space station.”

“I would not bet on it” the other catgirl replied, “most likely they got strict rules that we are not allowed to touch their toys. There are still quite a few people in Europe that don’t like us.”

“But they are here... this looks like a full hardtech expedition, but they hired us to help them.” Mira said thoughtful, “someone really clever was involved in the planning. Just look at youtube how many people from Europe saw Maico’s video!”

Her ears twitched as she looked out of the window. “They stopped working and going towards the elevator! Quick, we have to get to the airlock.”

The elevator was a cabin with a Mass Effect drive the catgirls had built last week. It provided an easy way from the surface of Pan to the airlock of Jenga, which was floating a few hundred meters above the icy moon. The catgirls had discussed landing Jenga on the surface but had decided against it.

Eric Hunt was satisfied with the day. They had managed to unload all the ISVs and secured their cargo on the surface an hour earlier than projected by the planning team on Earth. Now everyone could get a meal and a good night of sleep.

“Everyone of the Thor Heyerdahl inside?” he asked and waited for the replies, “then lets move upwards so we can enjoy some full gravity again!”

He pressed a big button with the label ‘up’ and with a small twitch the cabin began to float upwards. Slowly but steadily the gravity within the elevator began to increase.

“A floating elevator with artificial gravity... I am not sure if I want to take a look at it or if I want to cry that we are not allowed to use this tech at our base” Masuno Soetsu, the engineer of the Thor Heyerdahl said.

“Do not forget this Quirk thing we were told about” Eric Hunt replied, “this Handwavium might be a shortcut for a lot of things, but it is not completely reliable!”

“Reliable enough that we trust this elevator” Sarah Meier noted. “Cannot be that bad.”

“If this elevator would fall, it would take hours until we hit Pan” Eric returned.

There was a loud BING as the elevator finally stopped, clearly hearable through the vacuum.

“Upper level, mind your feet!” a female voice announced and the door opened.

The group quickly left the elevator and entered the airlock in front of them. It took another another three tours of the elevator to get the crews of the other three ships up to the space stations airlock. Finally everyone was inside and the pressure door closed behind them. A hissing noise sounded all around them as the air rushed back into the room, then a green lamp light up on the wall.

Eric Hunt checked the display of his spacesuit, it showed an atmospheric pressure similar to Earth. He unlocked his helmet and took it off while the inner door of the airlock slowly opened.

As the door gave way, they suddenly heard a loud applause. On the other side of the door was a large crowd of catgirls, clapping excited as the ESA and JAXA astronauts entered their space station for the first time. Two of them were holding a large poster.

‘Welcome to the frontier... what took you so long?’ Eric Hunt read and grinned as one of the catgirls approached his group.

“Hello, I am Cathy,” the catgirl said. “I welcome all of you to Jenga, its a pleasure to see you here at Saturn.”

“Thank you... Cathy” Eric replied, “in the name of this missions crew I thank you for your hospitality.”

“If you want, I will show everyone the Module we have arranged for you, it is directly to the right of this airlock. It has a small room for each of you and a few small conference and meeting rooms.” Cathy explained, “We have a large kitchen and cafeteria here on Jenga where you can get your meals. If you want you can eat with us there or carry them to your rooms, it isn’t far.”

“That sounds great” Eric replied, “you most likely know that the typical flat of an ESA or JAXA astronaut during the mission is a lot smaller!”

“Yes, I know” Cathy said and laughed. “Oh, and I have to introduce you to Cortana and Serina.”

Just as she spoke the name, the translucent image of two women appeared left and right to her in mid air.

“Good evening Mr. Hunt, I am Cortana, the cybernetic intelligence of the space station Jenga.” Cortana introduced herself, “if you have any request or question and do not see a catgirl, just call me, I am present in all of the corridors of Jenga. If you want to talk to me within a room, use the intercom at the door to call me.”

Eric Hunt blinked a few times but didn’t managed to reply anything.

“And I am Serina... I am the collective mind of the Exocomps here on the station, the small flying drones you already might have noticed. If you need something repaired, changed or built in your Module, just call me and I will see what the catgirls and me can do for you.”

“Thank you, we will remember it” Eric Hunt said. “I think most of my crew would like to change clothes and use a washing room. Maybe we can meet later in your cafeteria?”

“Yes, of course” Cathy answered, “but don’t forget your bathrooms also have a shower with hot water!”

This made Eric Hunt smile. 

‘Full gravity, a large cafeteria with real food and hot shower? I have to congratulate the people on Earth who organized this mission when I get back’ he thought.

“Just one thing, I am just curious” he finally asked, “I have seen the poster, is it that special that we managed to get to Saturn? I mean, the Nobu Shirase has been here months ago.”

Cathy grinned.

“Oh, thats not about Saturn. Mira is talking about your science and engineering achievement. It looked like Europe had been slacking off with their space tech for years, it is good to see you pushing forward again!”

* * *

The atmosphere in the anteroom of the ESA General director Allan Bossert was tense. A french looking man in a suit was sitting in a comfy armchair, angrily looking at his clock from time to time. The phone rang and a secretary talked with someone for a few moments, then stood up and walked over to the waiting man.

“The ESA General director has now time for you” he said and the man stood up and followed him to the door.

In his office, the General Director of ESA stood up and approached his visitor to shake his hand.

“Mr. Duree, welcome to ESA... what can I do for you?”

“Spare me your amenities Mr. Bossert, I am not used to wait... and I am sure you already know why I am here!” Mr. Duree said, visibly angry. “You LIED to me when you told me that this Fen will have no part in constructing the Pan station!”

“Mr. Duree, I assume you have watched this video of the Fen reporter. I can assure you that no Fen will join the work on the space station on Pan. Not only that, but the station will be completely Handwavium free, without any products created outside Europe and Japan.”

Duree looked directly into the eyes of the leader of ESA.

“And what is about this damned floating space thing full of this... this... this things? Were they just Hollywood like computer generated images?”

“No, of course not,” Mr. Bossert explained calmly, “as you already know we have hired a group of Fen to provide housing, food and emergency support for the construction side. Otherwise the mission to Pan would have got much more expensive because we would have to bring temporary housing for our Astronauts there. Or keep our ISVs on Pan for half a year!”

“But why did you choose a station full of this freaks? Why not just hire some normal humans?”

‘Sometimes our neighbors across the English Channel are a just difficult’ the ESA General Director thought and sighed.

“Mr. Duree, we selected this group of Fen because of multiple reasons. First, they have a mobile space station that large enough to easily house our team of forty astronauts. They are also not affiliated with one of the planetary factions of Fenspace, which means they do not care that much if they are at Mars, the Moon or Saturn. Third, they consider themselves a research and prototyping facility, which means we do not even interrupt their normal projects.”

Mr. Bossert smiled. “Which means that they were cheaper than all the alternatives. And you maybe can remember the clause in the Aurora mission statement to minimize the amount of money we pay the Fen for anything? How was it spelled, ‘prevent the unnecessary draining of European resources to off-Earth persons and organization’?”

Duree gnashed his teeth because he had suggested that clause to the French EU Commissioner himself.

“I do not care for a few thousand Euros, I expect you to get rid of these freaks as soon as possible” Duree shouted angrily.

“No.” Bossert replied flatly.

Duree blinked a few times, unable to accept this direct denial of his will.

“Did you forgot who I am?” Duree lowered his voice. “Do you know how many people in European governments and the Commission consider me a personal friend? One word of me and you will be without a job within days!”

Allan Bossert considered just laughing about this threat for a moment but decided otherwise.

“Mr. Duree, maybe you should reconsider such an action. The ESA is working on the most complicated and most expensive space project ever done in its history, and we are doing well. We have good news reports, both here in Europe and among the Fen. The technology we promised the EU Commission works flawless and we are ahead of the timetable. I am sure you already know that half of the governments consider their re-election a safe thing if Aurora is a success.”

Duree looked angrily at Bossert but stayed silent.

“Because of this I am sure that my job is safe for the moment.” Bossert continued, “And maybe you should think more about the economic advantages this project has been to your enterprise than to throw everything away because you do not like the Hotel of our astronauts!”

“This is not the last time we spoke about this” Duree said, “I promise you will hear from me again!”

“Of course Mr. Duree, you know my office is always open for you.”

* * *

The airlock of the Green Thumb was pushed open and Norman entered the container, excitedly waving a small data chip in his hand.

“I got it, I got it!” he shouted as he slammed the door close behind him.

Miriam looked up and grinned. “I hope it is not contagious?” she said which made Alexander snicker.

“You and your stupid jokes” Norman murmured, then he placed the data chip on the desk. “You remember that I promised to ask this Mad I know about some support?”

“Yeah, we remember him, Norman” Alexander replied, “you told us at least ten times about him the last days. Did you finally got a reply from your contact?”

“Yes, he did” Norman acknowledged with a smile, “and its not only a reply, he will provide us with some of his hardware! He say it will take a few weeks, but he promised me a space capable truck and a weapon system to continue with our plan.”

Miriam blinked. “Wow, that sounds really great... but say, who is this contact that he gives away weapons for our cause?”

“I think he is a Mad at the Soviets base on the moon” Norman said, “you know, they have always been proposed a strong ‘Earth stays on Earth’ politics.”

“Wait, you THINK he is a Soviet?” Alexander interrupted. “What are you talking about?”

“I never met him in person, but we talked a lot over a secure message board” Norman admitted. “You know, it would be stupid to meet because if something bad happens to one of us it would be too easy for Space Patrol to track the other one.”

“How the hell can we trust him if you have never met before?” Alexander wasn’t happy about this. “He might just be a trap from the Patrol which will jump on us any second! Or some AI or Fen that think its a nice joke!”

“Calm down Alex, its neither a joke nor a trap. We have been in contact for years, and he already supported us in the past” Norman angrily spit back, “where do you think I got the money we used to repair and upgrade the Green Thumb last year? At that time you didn’t even wanted to know!”

“Okay boys, take a seat and calm down” Miriam suddenly interrupted them. “Alexander, you are right that we have to be careful, but we already agreed that we need external support for the problem on Saturn.” She looked to Normal. “Norman, please be careful. If we can get this truck and the weapon system we will take it, but make sure no one follows you back to the Green Thumb. IF you get the truck at all.”

“Maybe we should look for another abandoned asteroid mine here in the belt” Alexander suddenly said, “there should be still more of this probing tunnels in other asteroids and we might not want to take this truck to the Green Thumb at all. You know, better safe than sorry.”

Both Norman and Miriam nodded.

* * *

Eric Hunt was sitting in an armchair, relaxing from the long hours of work on the ice moon. He smiled and thought about the short tour on their new ‘home’ for the next months. 

‘Full Earth gravity.’ he thought,

‘A crew with crazy robots to ask for help.

Rooms large enough to stretch yourself without knocking something over.

Hot showers for everyone!’

“Damned, I think every one of us will be spoiled for future missions. Unless we can persuade ESA to hire these catgirls for other missions too!” he said to the people at the table. “Did I mention that I would not have thought that this would increase our working speed that much?”

“Yes, you did.” Masuno said and grinned. “At least once per day. I must admit I would never have guessed you can get used to a station full of catgirls and flying robots. Oh sorry, flying Exocomps!”

“These Exocomps were really a bit strange” Eric said, thinking back to his first direct meeting with one of the small drones. “I thought the catgirls were mad when they told me to scold it.”

“Hey it worked” Masuno replied, “these clever little bastards might be curious as hell, but they are also really cute.”

He laughed as he suddenly noticed a single Exocomp rubbing against his leg and purring. “Yeah, we all love you too” he told the drone and pet it.

“And as everyone can see, the insanity of Fenspace is contagious” Eric added with a grin, “Two months ago no one would have thought about speaking and petting flying drones. But I think Mrs. Meier managed to settle in even better.”

Sarah Meier’s face turned a deep, hot red. “It was... it was an accident... I was just very tired... you know, we had worked overtime!”

“Hey, you decided yourself that you wanted to take a nap on the couch in the room near the cafeteria.” Masuno was certainly having fun with the discussion. “And you two certainly looked cute!”

“To be honest the catgirls here told me that the couch in the room was really for people that want to take a quick nap” Eric added, “and the catgirl that was found sleeping with you on the couch said she had been also very tired and didn’t noticed you weren’t catgirl.”

Sarahs face became even more red as she thought about quickly leaving the table.

“But lets talk about something different”, Eric tried to help Sarah, “did someone find the missing ice anchor?”

The ice anchors were long pipes that were using a chemical reaction to melt into the ice of the moon and anchor themselves with a few barbs there.

“Sorry boss” Masuno replied, “we looked everywhere and counted the deployed anchors twice, but one of them is still missing. Maybe they accidently put it in the cargo for our ships second turn?”

* * *

Somewhere, in an empty supply modules on Jenga a strange meeting was happening. The module was new and would not be used by the catgirl inhabitants for quite some time. There was still some infrastructure of the module missing, Serina had said the Exocomps had too many other things in mind at the moment to finish it.

But in one corner of the module, behind a few solid steel plates which would cover the floor in the coming months a small group of Exocomps was floating around a long pipe... one with an ESA logo on it.

Eight Exocomps were rushing up and down, showering the device with low powered sensor beams from all kind of angles, shivering in excitement from time to time.

New tech!

New tech they hadn’t seen before!

New tech without Handwavium!

A puzzle.

A new puzzle!

The had to solve it!

The catgirls had told them that their guests did not wanted them to help with their work, and that they should not interfere with it. It was a selfish thing to keep the work for themselves, but some of them were still nice. And luckily they stopped working at some time, which had given the group the possibility to get this artifact without interfering with their work!

After a few hours, they were finished with all their measurements and moved their work to a small and secret playground on the Grid. They had learned over the years from the catgirls that it was quite fun to work with simulations.

You could only topple a large mountain of Christmas packages once, but you could do it as often and as spectacular as you liked on the Grid.

Quickly a virtual copy of the sensor data they had gathered appeared in front of their virtual avatars. The Exocomps activated a physics simulation and added water as the ground.

Then they watched the staff sinking in the waves of their simulated ocean.

Something wasn’t right.

Cold... much colder... much much colder!

The simulation started anew, this time with a ground of ice below the staff. It stood on its tiny legs, until one of the Exocomps pushed the button at the top, activating the chemical mix inside.

Ice began to melt... and after a moment the simulated staff fell to the side.

The Exocomps were puzzled, viewing their sensor readings of the astronauts work on the moon again. Just as they decided to start another simulation run, Cortana's avatar suddenly appeared over them.

“What the hell is going on here” Cortana thundered.

The Exocomps were shocked, one of them quickly vanished the simulated artifact and tried to look unsuspicious.

“Do not think I have not seen what you did here. How did you get such a good reading on these anchors... wait a moment, you did it?”

Cortana began to trace the connection of the Exocomp back, which quickly lead her into a very new module. It took her a moment to a few cameras and upload the firmware for them.

“How could you? You have stolen from our guests!”

That confused the Exocomps for a moment. Hadn’t the guests said that this was the place for their spare parts? How could borrowing a spare part be wrong?

Cortana sighed about the communication between the little drones.

“You will give it back immediately, and you will do it in person. If they ban ALL of your kind from their working area, it will be your fault.”

Their brothers might be banned from the icy moon too? Suddenly the Exocomps were a bit worried.

* * *

Alexander and Miriam were sitting in the Green Thumbs main room. As always Miriam was browsing through the interwave, making small notes on a tablet on the table.

“Alexander, I am worried we are making a big mistake” Miriam suddenly said and leaned back. “I think this will all end badly for us.”

Alexander blinked a few times, he couldn’t believe what he just had heard. Miriam had always supported their ‘Saturn Solution’.

“Wait, a mistake?” he asked, “Why do you think so? I mean, we have been waiting for weeks that Normans contact would send us the promised help and you never had any doubts.”

“I know, I know... but things have changed.” Miriam looked back and forth between Alexander and her tablet. “I have watched news and rumors about the Danes at Saturn for the last month. The common perception is that they are nice but a bit stupid because they don’t even use Handwavium for Life Support. They got this descent interview with Maico and there are some pictures of them living together with the catgirls.”

“So what?” Alex shot back, “we are not depending on the mood of the Fen. Either the Danes go home... or they play a few militaristic tunes and get hit on the nose and then go home.”

“The problem is that they managed to make a lot of Fen comfortable with their presence.” Miriam tried to explain, “we need to wait for a moment of tension between both sides.”

Just in the moment Alexander tried to answer her doubts, the door was pushed open and Norman stormed into the room. “Oh yeah, we will rock them... you have to look at this baby! Lets go, its just outside the container!”

“Wait, you bought the damned thing here?” Miriam was visibly upset. “We agreed you would park it in the other mine so we can look at it later!”

“Our present is a little bit larger than we expected and I wasn’t really in the mood to drive the whole way from the other mine to the Green Thumb in my spacesuit” Norman said. “You know, our old Ford doesn’t have an airlock!”

“But what if Space Patrol has been tracking you? Miriam is right, that is a damned high risk!”

“Calm down, both of you.” Normal rolled with his eyes. “If Space Patrol would know about the truck, they would have never let me go off with it. Now lets move out so I can show you our little present for the Danes.”

They all left the Green Thumb through the airlock. The container was standing in a side tunnel of an old asteroid mine, which still had an airtight door. It had taken them some time to install an Air Saver to fill and evacuate the short tunnel, but it had become their own secret base.

“THIS is our new baby that will ruin Christmas for the Danes” Norman said with a grin and pointed to the truck with a long trailer that was standing in the tunnel. “I wouldn’t have guessed the weapon would be that large, but I will not complain about it.”

Norman opened the door at the back of the trailer. Inside the truck was a nearly 10 meter long machine made from pitch black metal. It seemed to be a wild mixture of thick cables, boxes of black metal and some camera lenses, all built around a central hollow cylinder that ran through the whole machine.

“Wow...” Alexander said, not sure how to continue for a moment. “That thing is huge.”

“Yes, isn’t it? I assume its a prototype for one of the Soviets capital ships” Norman told them, “not one of this pea shooters they use for their X-Com fighters. And its totally self-contained, which means we just have to bring it to the right place and arm it.”

“And if its so great, why does your mysterious contact gives it away?” Miriam interrupted their enthusiasm, “why doesn’t he use it himself?”

Normal looked irritated at her for a moment and then just shrugged. “Maybe he cannot easily leave the Moon without raising suspicion. Space Patrol and Great Justice might want to check up if anyone they know with the access to this hardware made a trip to Saturn. But I got this truck from a parking lot on the Moon, so they won't find anything.”

“This really sounds more and more crazy, lets go inside and have a talk about it” Miriam said, turned around and walked back to the Thumbs airlock.

“What is going on with her, she seems to be a little bit tense” Norman asked and Alexander shook his head.

“I am not sure, she worries about some strange media related things” he replied, “You know, here big ‘memetic warfare campaign’.”

* * *

“... as I described it in my last progress report, the work on Pan is continuing smoothly. 

Contacts with the Fen pet drones is still alternating between annoying, funny or useful. While they are hanging around the construction site to watch us, they are always eager to carry some tools for us. A few times they brought back things and even two of my crew, who lost ground contact and were flying away from Pan.

When the second part of our equipment arrives from Nouveau Paris, we will have already burrowed the first part of the station in the ice. I expect phase two of the project to be finish with little or no delay.”

Eric Hunt looked over his progress report for the bean counters at Earth for a last time. Even here, a billion kilometers away from Earth it was impossible to escape the paperwork completely.

He sometimes wondered how the Fen would have built this station. Most likely it would have been something very crazy. Or maybe a floating city like in Star Wars above the clouds of Saturn.

He sighed, whatever it would have been, it would have got artificial gravity. Thinking about this for a moment, he opened the document again.

“I would also like to forward the request of multiple crew members to allow the addition of a waved gravity generator to the habitation section of the station. I talked with several Fen during the last week, according to their knowledge it should be trivial to add an electrical powered generator without compromising the station.

As part of the ‘Environmental Systems’ it would most likely be completely free of strange side effects. One generator per section would also allow us to regulate the gravity in each module on its own, which is necessary for some of the production technology we want to install.”

He nodded to himself and pressed the ‘send mail’ button, then stood up and left his apartment to join his crew members in the canteen.

“Ah Eric, good to see you... we had been expecting you meeting us here a few hours ago... that much paperwork left?”

Eric nodded. “I always thought that being an astronaut would allow you to leave all this paperwork back on Earth, but the damned bureaucrats got an upgrade for their procedures.”

Everyone at the table chuckled.

“Before you ask me again, yes I asked them about the gravity generator. Most likely they will declare me insane and unfit for command, but maybe they will see the benefits of the idea. Transferring from this station to some hole in an ice moon with zero gravity doesn’t sound great.”

Sarah sighed. “Don’t forget to mention the nice cafeteria here, and the wonderful showers they have installed in our rooms. I asked one of the catgirls about the showers, did you knew that they don’t even used Handwavium for them, except for some filtration module in the bottom?”

“What are you up to?” Eric asked suspiciously.

“Oh, we have the job to build up the station, but we are also allowed to expand it later if necessary. The only restriction we got is that Handwavium is not allowed inside the station.”

“Yes, we all know that...” Eric started, but Sarah just interrupted him.

“What's about putting one additional box of steel into the ice, one that is NOT part of the station? If its not part of the station, we might get away with ignoring some of the rules.”

Eric shook his head. “Everything we build with the materials we have is part of the station. I am sorry, but this is not going to work.”

Sarah just grinned.

“Oh, I think I know a few engineers who might be willing to build us an additional parts for the moon. Without using up ESA or JAXA supplied materials, but with artificial gravity and hot showers!”

“They will just shoot us when we get back to Earth” Eric just murmured, trying to ignore the discussion Sarah just started at the table. “They give us some medals and then they will shoot us.”

* * *

Somewhere in the darkness, many light seconds away from the huge ringed planet called Saturn was a pitch black platform, placed there by an unremarkable waved truck half a day ago. After hours of calibrating its orientation through analysis of incoming light from stars and planets, the computer on the platform finished its preparation phase.

The platform suddenly became alive in a bright green life. A crackling sphere of lightning appeared around the weapon, expanding to a diameter of more than 40 meters and then collapsing back onto the weapon. Within the blink of an eye, the metallic projectile was accelerated to an incredible speed.

For hours its flight wasn’t noticed by anyone.

Seconds before the projectile hit its target, a group of Exocomps finally noticed it. They had chased a small block of ring ice a few hundred kilometers away from Jenga and one of them recognized the moving dot on its infrared camera.

‘TOY! Lets catch it!’, the small drone thought and its companions quickly turned around to look for their new prey. They quickly estimated the distance, only to be disappointed.

‘Oh, too far away’ they thought saddened, ‘maybe a friend can catch it?’

Then they all flinched in unison.

Whatever it was, it was fast... very fast. And it was going to hit home!

Their shock hit Serina’s consciousness a few milliseconds later. While her mind ran distributed on all the Exocomps, she normally did not payed that much attention to most of her little children.

The majority of the Exocomps left behind on Jenga froze in unison as a priority alert raced through Serina’s mind, she could feel the world around her slowing down. She looked out through all her Exocomps eyes searching for the incoming threat.

“There... damned, not much time!”

She ignored a curious word from Cortana. Jenga’s second AI was still working in normal time. 

Jengas radar emitter began to charge up, but it would take a few moments until it was charged for the first pulse.

“Great, our defense network just take too long to wake up!!” she cursed, waking up Jengas defenses as fast as she could.

“What the hell is going on” Cortana asked, finally getting in sync with Serina just as the first radar pulses reflected back from the incoming projectile.

“Kinetic impactor. 0.7 seconds to impact. It’ll hit the construction site.” she replied focused on her task.

The eyes of Cortana's Grid avatar widened in shock. “Interception?”

“A single laser shot in a few moments, everything else takes too long. And not enough time to warn anyone on the moon!”

“You try to rescue the survivors, I will manage the cats.” Cortana said and activated a station wide alert signal. “Damned, I would give half of my servers for catgirls who can overclock.”

“Time is over... fire” Serina murmured and a blue pulse of light raced outwards and hit the incoming projectile, vaporizing most of it instantly. 

Normally that would have neutralized any projectile easily.

But the projectile was only a fraction of a seconds away from hitting its target, and a whole section of Pan’s surface flashed bright white as the icy surface was vaporized by the metal vapor.

Both AIs slowed down to ‘real time’ again, they needed the help of catgirls. Cortana instantly activated a holographic Avatar in Jengas Control room.

“Everyone listen to me, this is an emergency” she shouted, “we just had an attack on the construction site by a kinetic impactor! We managed to deflect parts of the projectile but some of it still hit the target. Get out our medical supplies and prepare for injured people, Serina is just getting them all back to the station.”

Most catgirls just stared at her in shock, but a few of them began moving. Cortana pointed to the catgirl standing at Sensor Control.

“Organize a secure perimeter as large as you can make it around this moon, we might have more of these things incoming. If its out there and it moves our way, we want to know.”

The whole room stayed frozen for another moment and then suddenly everyone exploded into action.

“Samantha, we are activating the stations drives, I want to move it exactly over the construction site.”

“Get out as many recon drones as we have in the launchers, I want to have a sensor perimeter as soon as possible. Luci, ask the labs if they have drones for repair, I want them out in space two minutes ago!”

“This is Jenga to all spacecrafts in the Saturn subsystem. We are declaring an emergency with a perimeter zone of 10000 km around the Saturn Moon Pan. All ships in the area please contact us and watch your sensors for enemy fire.”

“Cathy, call Coruscant and tell them... I will see that I get a line to the White Tower to get an okay for our security zone.”

One of the catgirls turned to Cortana. “Do you have data from Pan? What is about the astronauts, are they okay?”


	3. Chapter 3

**April 2018**

Eric Hunt blinked a few times, trying to make sense of the colorful things in front of his eyes. His sight was getting better every minute until he finally managed to recognize the ‘thing’ in front of him.

“That’s Saturn... and there are the rings.” he thought, concentrating to clear his head. “I am... I am floating. What has happened?”

He still remembered working on the surface of Pan, trying to fix a problem with the anchor of the fusion reactor module they had brought to the Moon. Suddenly he recalled a bright flash.

“An accident. A malfunction?” he murmured, the adrenalin rush hitting him like a hammer. What was that red flashing nagging at his peripheral vision.

The suit had been damaged he realised, feeling sick. He reached for the diagnostic panel on his wrist, but stopped as a sharp pain shot up his arm like a bullet.

“Hey!” he called out, hoping the communicator was working. “Hey! This is Eric Hunt. I’m out in open space I need help! If anyone can hear me, please respond!”

He waited... a minute? A second? His head swam with dizziness.

“Mr. Hunt, please remain calm, we are currently in the midst of the recovery process.” a female voice on his right side announced. “Are you hurt or in immediate danger?”

The left speaker crackled.

“My suit is damaged and my right arm hurts when I move it.” He grimaced as another bolt of pain stabbed him hard “What happened? Where’s the rest of my crew?”

An exocomp popped up in front of him, searchlights ablaze. He shielded his vision with his good arm, struggling to figure out what it was carrying in it’s jaw.

“A roll of duct tape” Eric murmured as he felt something touching his helmet.

“Mr. Hunt, we just found you. We are moving you to our station, you will arrive any moment” the voice tried to reassure him. “Please try not to move at all!”

Finally he saw the edge of one of the catgirls space station’s airlocks. A catgirl in a suit became visible in his view, pointing a miniature pocket lamp to his face.

“He is still consciousness, get him inside immediately!”

He felt a light touch of gravity as he was lowered onto a stretcher and moved through another airlock. A catgirl carefully opened his helmet and fresh air rushed in.

“Please keep down. Your arm is broken, we have to get you out of the suit.” a catgirl with a Red Cross batch around the arm told him. “As soon as we have secured your arm you can move again.”

All around he could hear other dialogs between catgirls and his crew members. Finally they managed to cut him out of the suit and he felt something hardening around his arm. Something was pressed against his shoulder and he felt the pain ending.

“Thank you” he said, looking at the hypospray injector. “Again, what has happened?”

“Someone has attacked your construction site with a long-range weapon, that is all we currently know. Serina managed to hit the projectile moments before it impacted on the moon, unfortunately not early enough.” The catgirl looked at the injector. “Just something against the pain, no handwavium involved.”

“Is my crew okay?” Eric asked, trying to imagine a reason for someone to attack their unfinished base.

“We are still getting them all in but I fear that a few of them were hurt badly,” the catgirl answered. “Fortunately no one was killed.”

Just as if her words had been a bad omen, the airlock to the room opened again and Eric could hear a woman screaming in pain.

“Someone get me an anesthetic... and something to seal of a major wound!” a catgirl shouted and several Exocomps rushed towards the airlock. “And a Blood Orange group AB! Quickly!”

“I hope she knows what she is doing” Eric said and stood up to get to Sarah Meier. He couldn’t fail to notice the large pool of blood below one of her legs. “Sarah... what has happened to her?”

The catgirl just ignored Eric and continued scanning Sarah Meier carefully with a device. She stopped for a moment and stared on her scanner while listening to something, then she grabbed one of the closeby catgirls.

“Get the machine over here quickly, we might need it” she whispered into her ear and the catgirl ran out of the room. “Where is that orange?” she called loudly, just as an Exocomp with the large fruit arrived at her side.

She quickly began to set up a blood transfusion, then she looked up to Eric.

“I had a six month medical training at the Kandor City Hospital last year” she said and looked back to her scanner. “Unfortunately this is... this is be beyond my abilities.”

“What are you telling me?” Eric shouted and the catgirl flinched.

“Mrs Meier has lost a lot of blood. I managed to stop the bleeding at her leg, but the scanner tells me she still has lots of internal bleedings.” She hit a button on her scanner. “I fear she will be dead before we can get her to a real hospital at Coruscant. Unless...”

“Unless what?”

“Handwavium might be able to save her, but she will not look the same afterwards.” The catgirl sighed. “We never would do this against someone’s will, but she is already unconsciousness and will be dead before we can get more help. You are her commanding officer, it is your decision.”

“You mean...” Eric gulped at the thought, but he forced himself to stay on the topic. “You are sure this is the only way to survive?”

“I am reasonably sure she will survive the procedure” the catgirl answered. “And I am nearly certain she will die before we can get her to Coruscant. Say no and we will put her in the fastest vehicle we have, but decide now... time is running out!”

* * *

The Fleet Control room had been designed in 2011 to direct the coming fleets of the Galactic Republic on their missions through the galaxy. The plans had been updated multiple times during the war against the Boskones, but unfortunately there hadn’t been time to implement them.

When the war was over, several Senators argued that the design was oversized for the peacetime fleets of the Republic and that most warships would be integrated into Great Justice organized fleets anyways. The Fleet Control room had been downsized to a more ‘reasonable’ design and was renamed Traffic Control. But it was still considered an important part of the city.

“Commodore, there is a holocall from Pan, a catgirl called Cathy. She says they have an emergency on Pan and she has to talk to you right now!”

Commodore Gavin Amstrad looked up to the Lieutenant who had just entered his small office.

“Does she has told you a reason why she has to talk to me instead of going through the normal channels at Traffic Control?” he asked quietly and the Lieutenant shook his head.

“No, she has not. But she said it was very urgent, Coruscant might be in danger” the Lieutenant replied. “I checked her name, the Great Justice database marks her as ‘on call’.”

Gavin nodded. “I will take the call Lieutenant, thank you.”

The Lieutenant left his office and a hologram of a catgirl appeared on his desk. Gavin listened to her message, his eyes becoming wider and wider. Finally the call ended and Gavin stood up.

“Shit... not even a month until the Convention and suddenly hell breaks loose and someone is bombarding civilian targets” he murmured. “And no guarantee they won’t hit Coruscant too.”

“Okay, everyone listen!” he said loudly as he stepped out of his office. “There has been a kinetic attack on the Daneverse construction site on Pan from beyond sensor range. We will make sure Coruscant will not be hit next!”

He pointed to the officer at the large monitoring display. “Lt. Commander Delso, you and your team will bring every sensor online we have placed on and around Mimas. If it can look at the sky, I want it up and running now!”

“Lieutenant Simons, I want a list of all ships in the Saturn subsystem we know about.” He continued as he turned to the communication consoles. “Name and type of the ship, flag of record, current destination. If we have anyone unwilling to talk to us, tell me at once.”

“And you Lieutenant Vau, you will call Blue Squadron and tell them to launch immediately. When we find an unknown or unwilling contact, I want to have a few fighters to check it out immediately. In addition to this they will look out for incoming kinetic projectiles and anything suspicious.

Tell Red Squadron to stay on hot standby so they can launch any second. I will contact General Dana Maeter and get the okay to activate them too.” Gavin sighed, sometimes the regulations were a pain in the ass, but without the agreement of an Admiral or General, he wasn’t allowed to send both squadrons away from Coruscant. “Tell them what happened on Pan and that I cannot give them a launch order at the moment.”

He stepped back into his office and dialed the General’s holophone number. The General’s aide appeared on his screen.

“Good Morning Commodore Gavin, General Dana Maeter is not in her office at the moment. Maybe you want to leave a message?”

“Where is she? I need to speak with her at once!” Gavin shot back.

“I am sorry Commodore, but she is in a closed Senate session. You know, preparation for the upcoming Convention. ”

“Thank you for this information” Gavin said and ended the call, already thinking about the easiest way to contact the General without bumping into a dozen bureaucratic barriers first.

A display on his left showed him that both Red and Blue Squadron were already taking off into the sky.

He grinned.

* * *

She was floating, somewhere in a dark place. Sometimes she thought she could hear voices, but they were just a distant whisper among the continuous pulsing in the background. But there was this smell. She couldn’t recognize it, it was just strange.

‘I do not care’ she thought, ‘it is warm and comfy, it is okay.’

Comfy? How could this darkness she was floating in feeling comfy? Slowly she became aware that she was laying on something... or under something?

‘A bed, I am laying in a bed!’ flashed through her mind as she tried to remember. ‘The explosion, the flash! They found me in time!”

Sarah carefully opened her eyes, blinking many times until she got used to the light in the room. It took her a moment to recognize Eric Hunt sitting on a chair besides her bed, his arm fixed by an unfamiliar bandage.

“Sarah” he said and smiled, “welcome back among the living... I thought we had lost you.”

Sarah looked at him with suspicion. Did Eric felt responsible for what happened?

“What happened on Pan? I just remember some kind of explosion that hit me” she asked and shivered. “I do not remember much after this point.”

“Be grateful about this, when they brought you to the station your leg looked like the Thor Heyerdahl had rolled over it.” Eric took a deep breath, trying to find the right words. “In fact you would have died if I had not allowed the Fen to use their... their magical stuff.”

Sarah stared at him for a moment, then she looked down to her legs... or better her leg. Even now she could felt her other leg itching, but she could see that there was only one leg below the blanket. She pulled out her arm under the blanket and twitched.

“What... FUR? HOW?” she cried with wide eyes. “WHAT HAPPENED TO ME?”

* * *

The door suddenly opened and a catgirl rushed in. “Cathy! CATHY!!! We found it, we really found IT!”

Cathy slowly stood up from the communication terminal she had been using to talk with Coruscant a few minutes ago.

“Calm down Alice, the attack is over and we have more than enough time to breath” she said grinning. “Now sit down and tell me what you found.”

“No, you have to see it yourself” the other catgirl replied hectically, grabbed Cathy’s hand and pulled her up towards one of the corridors.

‘Keep calm, no reason to throw her around’ Cathy thought, trying to keep her martial arts training under control and stumbling along with Alice. “So what is so important that it cannot wait?”

“You remember we launched all of our drones for a sensor perimeter?” Alice asked while they both ran towards Jengas control tower. “We also sent one along the path of the projectile to backtrack it. It just reported back a minute ago!”

“So you found some evidence who shot us?” Cathy shot back. Suddenly she was a lot more interested in what Alice told her.

“No, we did not... but we found something else!”

With this they both reached the room of Jengas second holo-globe. Cathy could so a lot of small holographic dots floating in a roughly spherical configuration.

“This is a huge cloud of small and large pieces of matter, distributed over nearly a lightsecond diameter” Alice explained. “They are all moving outwards outwards from a common center... and their movement started the moment the projectile was there too.”

“We need the coordinates and vectors of each of the parts as precisely as possible” Cathy said, looking at the holographic image. “THIS might be the only evidence we have at the moment, maybe we can reconstruct what it was!”

Alice grinned. 

“Cathy, we are not amateurs... we already have sent more drones there to get a real good sensor image of each part, and a group of Exocomps who will collect all the small part. They will arrive soon! Don’t worry, we have thought of everything!”

* * *

It took Eric nearly thirty minutes to calm down Sarah a bit. Finally he leaned forward and grabbed her at both shoulders.

“Sarah, look at me... LOOK AT ME! You were minutes away from DYING. Whatever they did, they SAVED YOU.” he said, looking directly into her eyes. “Don’t let me down now, you have to calm down.”

Sarah just stared at him silently for nearly a minute, then she slumped down into the bed again.

“So thats how it ends” she whispered as Eric took her hand. For more than ten minutes neither of them spoke a word.

Then someone knocked at the door and opened it. A catgirl with a Red Cross batch entered the room, carrying a tray with food on it.

“You are finally awake!” she said with a smile, “I am Taja, you gave me quite a shock when they brought you in. I worried we wouldn’t be able to save you.”

“Thank you for saving me” she said and sighed. “Our mission busted, ESA will fire me as soon as they learn about this and I am crippled. Just great.”

The catgirl looked a bit puzzled and showed her the tray.

“You shouldn’t be so negative... I am sure your mission will continue and ESA will surely not fire anyone until the mission is over.” Taja said. “Just eat something, you must be very hungry.”

“I am not really in the right mood to eat” Sarah said and shook her head. “Just give me something against the damned itching of my missing leg!”

“Oh, that is just your leg regrowing, the itching should go away in a few hours when the leg is finished. Now get something to eat!”

Sarah blinked a few times.

“Wait... WHAT?”

* * *

“... we cannot say what happened with the Aurora Mission, but rumors among the Fen suggest there has been an accident or an attack on the construction site. According to our sources, the moon Pan has been damaged badly by the attack, the fate of the astronauts is still unknown.”

Duree switched off his radio and sighed. The international and local news had been going crazy for hours, but reliable news reports were still unavailable. Something has happened on the moon and it had not be nice. He just wanted to turn on a different radio station as his private phone began to ring.

“Duree” he said, only to hear a very familiar voice.

“Good afternoon Mr. Duree” Allan Bossert, the ESA Director General replied. “I hope you had a pleasant day.”

“Mr. Bossert” Duree said, “I am not sure why you are even calling me. Don’t you have a crisis to manage?”

“Yes, of course, the crisis on Pan. I am very busy with it at the moment” Bossert continued, “but I thought it would be a good thing to remind you about our Press conference tomorrow morning. Would be a pity if you miss it.”

Duree laughed loudly. “Mr. Bossert, I don’t know if you consider this some kind of joke or not. I do not see any reason why I should suddenly change my schedule and go to a Press conference with YOU!”

“Oh, thats very easy Mr Duree, you owe me.”

It took Duree a moment to be able to talk again. “Mr. Bossert, the day when I owe YOU is the day when Hell will freeze over!”

“You think so Mr. Duree? Maybe you should look for your winter clothing, because I am the one who could have flushed down your career and all your little political favors down the drain. I hope you still remember.”

“Mr. Bossert... you cannot think that anyone will believe you, can you?”

“Oh, I think that will really depend on the kind of evidence I might have, don’t you think so, Mr. Duree? If the most important European project done in the last decade goes down the drain, why should I protect you?”

Duree suddenly felt a shiver going down his spine. Bossert had surely not recorded the meeting with him. Or maybe he had?

“What do you want?” Duree shot back, suddenly feeling a little bit ill.

“Oh, nothing outstanding. As you already know, everyone is nervous about the Aurora Mission at the moment and I think we need to calm them down a bit.” Bossert answered. “We will give the press a good show how committed ESA and the industry are to the project. If we manage the press, I will take care of the EU Commission.”

Durees thoughts were racing at the speed of a bullet while he tried to think through the idea. If they would get the press on their side and Bossert managed to keep the Commission quiet, maybe Aurora still had a chance.

“I have already some hard facts on what happened on Pan” Bossert continued, “and it is looking not that bad for the mission. We will have to improvise, but I think we can do it.”

Duree had always been a man of quick decisions. “Expect me at ESA in three hours, I want to see your facts before I meet the reporters” he said and ended the phone call.

‘To the hell with ESA and the Fen, this is also about my fortune’ he thought and called his secretary.

“Cancel all meetings the next two day, I have to personally handle something important!”

* * *

ESA’s press room was full of journalists, not a single seat was empty. Camera Flashlights were illuminating the ESA Director General Bossert and the French tycoon Duree as they entered the room.

“Thank you for coming to this Press Conference” Bossert began after both of them had sat down. “I am sure all of you heard the rumors about what happened on Pan, we are here to tell you what we know about it and how we see the future of Aurora.”

A few journalists raised their hands, but Bossert shook his head.

“There will be time for questions later, let me first summarize the situation on Pan.

Yesterday morning at 10am Middle European Time the construction site on Pan was attacked by an unknown force. They tried to hit the place a military grade kinetic weapon from many million kilometers away. Luckily for the astronauts and ESA the only projectile was detected by the Fen seconds before impact. It was deflected partly.”

“You mean the catgirls?” one of the journalists shouted and Bossert nodded.

“Yes. That are the Fen I was talking about.

Parts of the projectile still hit the construction site, doing a lot of damage and injured many of the astronauts. All of them were rescued and brought to the space station within minutes after the attack. The damage to the equipment was widespread but failed to penetrate the ice of the moon to reach the parts of the new station that were already burrowed.”

“When will the astronauts come home?” a voice from the back of the room demanded to know.

Bossert looked over to Mr. Duree, who rolled his eyes.

“This was a terror attack, and we should not pretend its the first one” Duree said. “It might have been the first time terrorists hit a space asset of the European Union, but that is not the point. Europa’s industry has spent a lot of time and resources in this project and we will not demand anyone will come home just because of a setback. We do not give in to terrorists.”

“Exactly,” Bossert agreed, “and more important than the setback is a simple fact. The terrorists had a state of the art weapon with an incredible range. They achieved a nearly total surprise.

They still FAILED.

Whoever they are, whatever they want, they will learn to accept this. They had their chance with a surprise attack, they will not get another one.

ESA has been in contact with Europol about this incident and according to my sources they and the Japanese National Police Agency will send a pair of investigators to Saturn. They will work together with the Fen police to find this terrorists and bring them to justice.”

“We also have a supply of spare materials that were meant for Aurora before the plan of the station was finalized” Mr. Duree added, “They are in the process of being shipped to Nouveau Paris at the moment. With these materials our specialists at Pan should be able to finish their mission.”

“Okay, now might be the time for a few questions” Bossert said with a smile and dozens of arms shot up to get the first one.

* * *

“Welcome to Bruessel Mr Bossert, we are curious what ESA can tell us about the status of the Aurora project.”

Meeting the EU Commission was always a headache in Bossert’s opinion, too many national interests without voter oversight in the same room. But they were also the group he had to convince that Aurora wasn’t wrecked beyond hope.

“Thank you for the invitation Commissioners. I have prepared a short presentation about the facts known about the attack on the Aurora mission and the current status of crew and material. My staff has also worked out a preliminary strategy how we can get out of the current current crisis and bring the project back on track within the projected timeline.”

“Spare us the details for the beginning, just tell us where we are and what we can expect from the future,” one of the Commissioners said, “we can only do a preliminary decision at the moment anyways. The rest will have to be decided when we get more facts about the incident.”

Bossert took a deep breath and put the small remote control for his notebook away.

“You know all the basics about the attack from the data sheet I sent you yesterday. Our astronauts got attacked by the Fenspace variant of a long range precision weapon. At the current time nobody knows what kind of group did this terror attack. Our astronauts survived the attack, Mrs Sarah Meier barely and only because she was rescued by Fen bio-technology.

Like most other terror attacks, nobody did predict this to happen, we have no knowledge who did it and what kind of damage they did. But certain facts allow us some speculation about the criminals.

Up to this point no group has taken responsibility for the attack. I also received the news that the Fen found the wreckage of the weapon system which fired on Pan. This suggests the weapon malfunctioned shortly after the shot or was a one-shot design. The terrorists also did only fire a single shot at the moon, which suggests a limit of their resources.”

“What if they do it again?”

“According to the Fen on board of the stations, this should be close to impossible. They are currently setting up an early warning system, and they promised to keep their stations defenses on hot standby until a permanent solution is available.

In addition to this the yearly political meeting of the Fen will be in three weeks on Mimas, which means the amount of security after the attack will be quite high. I am confident that no further attack will be successful in the next months. This gives us time to plan for the necessary defenses of the station.”

“Defenses? Did you forget that this is a civil project, not some military adventure Mr. Bossert!”

“I am sorry, maybe defenses was the wrong word.” Bossert replied carefully, “I was not thinking about weapon systems. But we are already doing a simulation at ESA if we can put the station deeper into the ice of the moon. Together with an Early Warning System this would help against any kind of attack and give the Fen at Mimas time to react.”

Bossert opened his briefcase and took out two folders, a thin one and a really thick one. He hold up the thin one.

“But the important point is that we cannot do this anymore just by following the plan. This here is the Aurora Mission Goal I presented you a few years ago. I can promise you we will still reach these goals, maybe with a few months delay. The whole station as ESA and JAXA described it, without any kind of Handwavium.”

He waited a few seconds, then he hold up the thick folder for a moment.

“This is the full plan how to do the Aurora mission, with all the details and pre-planned steps. Forget about it!”

This brought quite a bit concern into the faces of the Commissioners, Bossert could hear a few of them whispering to each other.

“We cannot do this mission as we planned it anymore, we have to improvise and adapt our planning if we want to reach the original goal. We have been dealt a huge blow, but we have the personal and resources at Pan to compensate for it if we let them do it. Trying to directly control this from Earth will only end in a disaster.

I propose to give our team on Pan the freedom to change plans if necessary to reach the defined goal. We might also need to ship them more materials than necessary, but I already got the confirmation that we still have reserves available. We still can make Aurora a success for all of us.”

“Thank you Mr. Bossert for this facts and proposal. We will have to talk about this but we will let you know about our decision this evening. But please keep in mind that this will only be a preliminary one, long term plans will depend on the progress made for Aurora.”

* * *

“Connecting, please wait...”

Kurt Coller waited impatiently for the connection to be established.

‘Radio to Nouveau Paris, radio to the Moon, Interwave to the catgirls space station, at least two of those connections should be unnecessary’ he thought, ‘time that we finally push against a few of those stupid rules. We could drop nearly 2 seconds round trip time’.

The screen in front of him changed and the face of Eric Hunt appeared, his arm still bandaged.

“Good morning Mr. Hunt.”

“Good morning Mr. Coller, what can I do for you? I had not expected a call like this.”

“Mr. Hunt, could you please get the stick I gave you before you left to Nouveau Paris?”

Hunt blinked for a moment and nodded. Every communication between the Aurora crew and the ESA control center in Darmstadt was encrypted by some ‘unbreakable’ security code. Still, just before he left for the ESA depot in orbit the mission director had given him a small flash-drive with onetime-pad data. ‘Just in case’ Koller had told him.

A few minutes later he appeared on Kurt Coller’s screen again. The image flickered for a few moments as the new encoding activated and a clock began to run backwards on the screen.

“Thank you Mr. Hunt. You should know this is NOT an official ESA call, this is just a message Mr. Allan Bossert asked me to relay to you.” Coller explained, “There will be no recordings on our side and I would like to ask you to delete any recording of the call on your side later.”

Eric nodded again, ‘This is getting stranger by the minute’ he thought.

“The ESA Director General has talked with the EU Commission and managed to get a few concessions, but we both know that the whole Aurora mission is vulnerable at the moment.

You will have to improvise for the rest of the mission. Our goal is still the same, the EU and Japan want the station and everything inside has to be as it is specified in the mission statement. Forget about the original instructions how to get there, you will have to make your own plans now.

We are preparing a third supply run for Pan at the moment, which contains all kind of spare materials we have available, but it might not be enough or parts might arrive too late. If you need to repair or replace things just do it, with or without help.

This became a fail-pass mission for ESA and JAXA in the last days. If we succeed, nobody will care if we played strictly by the rules. If we fail, there are more than enough people looking for our scalps. Enough that we won’t get a second chance in the next decade or more.

I know I can count on you. Get your crew together and draw up a new plan how to get out of this catastrophe. Nobody here on Earth needs to know the details, you have more things to do than to write up a new 1000 pages mission plan.

Good luck Eric...”

The video conference had ended minutes ago, but Eric Hunt was still staring on the screen, trying to make his mind up what he should think about the message. He listened to the message a second time, then a third time. Finally he suddenly grinned, pressed the ‘delete’ button and stood up.

There was a lot of work to do.


	4. Chapter 4

**Late April 2018**

“... so that's our status at the moment.” Eric Hunt ended his small presentation. “We got kicked hard, but the big book of rules has been burned too. Oh... and we might be the ones who define the fate of ESA and JAXA for the next decades.”

21 astronauts were sitting around the large table together with Hunt, six of them were still in their beds because of their injuries. The only member of the Aurora expedition that had been injured badly and was at the table was Sarah Meier. Eric was still a bit dazed about how fast she had healed.

“Max, you organize everyone who is not hurt at all. You will get back to the moon and make a first survey which parts got damaged and what survived the attack intact.” Eric continued. “Everything that might be damaged must be checked before we can continue.”

Mac Raffa, one of the engineers that had arrived with the Ferdinand Magellan nodded, but Masuna Soetsu complained.

“What? I have to go out on the moon again right now?” he said with a wide grin, “can you not assign me a job together with our new cute one?”

He smiled at Sarah Meier and tried to pat her on her furred arm, but Sarah drew her arm away with lightning speed and hissed angrily. Masuno suddenly saw a series of sharp looking claws right above his hand.

“Oh damned” he shouted and drew his hand back carefully. “Why do the cute ones always get sharp claws!”

That made everyone at the table snicker, including Sarah Meier.

“Sarah, they said you should stay on the space station for a few more days to get used to... to everything. But you are not injured anymore, so get in contact with our host.” Eric said, “we will need additional support to plan our next steps. You can also ask them if they can help us checking the equipment on the moon later, or what other ideas they have.”

Sarah wasn’t in a good mood, but she nodded. At least Eric wasn’t keeping her out of the mission.

“Okay Eric, I will do so.”

Before Eric Hunt could continue, someone knocked at the door.

“Yes?” he shouted and a catgirl entered the room.

“Mr. Hunt, the police will arrive in a few minutes, we thought you wanted to be there.”

* * *

Cathy and Eric Hunt were looking at a control monitor while the large Camping Car slowly moved into Jengas airlock for trucks. It was the first time that an investigator from Space Patrol was coming to Jenga, normally the catgirls liked their privacy.

“Couldn’t you just close the airlock with one of these ‘atmospheric forcefields’ you see in Scifi” Eric asked, “It would allow us to watch our visitors from the Hangar itself!”

“We tried, we really tried” Cathy answered and chuckled. “But the forcefield sometimes failed when a car with gravity drive moved through. We decided to keep the normal airlock procedures until we can fix it.”

The car finally stopped moving and the airlock closed behind it. A few moments later the light on the inner door changed from red to green and the door opened.

“Lets greet our visitors” Cathy said and both of them entered the large airlock. The doors of the car were already opening and three people stepped out of the car.

“Hello,” Cathy said with a smile, “welcome to Catgirl Industries. My name is Cathy and this is Eric Hunt, the leader of the expedition from Earth.”

“Thank you Cathy” one of the three men answered, “my name is Arthur Nkomo. Great Justice sent me out here when we got the news what has happened.”

Cathy blinked a few times, she had expected someone from Space Patrol.

“And these two gentlemen” Arthur continued and looked left and right “are Mr. Juergen Schmidt of Europol and Mr. Ichikawa Zenigata of the Japanese National Police Agency.”

“Good to see you here” Cathy said as she looked over the group. All three of them looked a little bit tired. “I can show you your rooms, we can give you a short summary what happened here on Pan afterwards. And we already brought some parts of the attack weapon to Jenga, I am sure you want to see them.”

Arthur looked at his two associates from Earth.

“I think we will start talking with some of the astronauts who remember the attack. And maybe a few of the catgirls who were in the control room at this time.” Arthur said flatly. “Oh, and we would like to see all the parts of the weapon system tomorrow!”

“I am not sure we will have all parts today” Cathy disagreed, “it might take us a few days to assemble them all.”

Arthur sighed.

“Cathy, can I just talk to you alone for a moment?”

Cathy looked a bit puzzled but led Arthur into a small utility room.

“Cathy, you have been doing work with Great Justice before and you might be pretty happy that everything has been going well since the terror strike... let me just tell you this will not continue for long.”

“What do you mean?” Cathy asked.

“While this joined investigation is great, the pressure is increasing. Just look up ‘Boskonian war, second round’ on the Interwave. And lets not forget that there are already politicians in the EU and Japan who talk about ‘these Fen terrorists’ and ‘protect the peaceful interests of Earth in space’. We are all working on borrowed time.”

Cathy looked unhappy, but did not interrupted Arthur.

“We might have only a few days until we have to show them something... and only a few weeks until this whole thing turns into a major crisis.” Arthur said flatly. “Or war.”

Cathy gulped.

“So please do me a favor and hurry up, we need a look at this weapon system,” Arthur added quietly, “we still have a chance to prevent a disaster.”

* * *

“Good morning,” Jürgen Schmidt said as he sat down at the breakfast table in the Cafeteria. Both Arthur Nkomo and Ichikawa Zenigata were already there, looking up from their breakfast. “I am sorry that I am late, but the shower controls were... unusual.”

“Just sit down with us,” Arthur said with a grin, “things like this happen to everyone up in orbit for the first time.” He already knew that the cats from Jenga were a bit mad about their showers.

They had started interviewing some of the astronauts yesterday, but had to pause because everyone had becoming too tired.

“So how do we continue today, there are still quite a few astronauts left we have not talked to.” their japanese co-worker asked, “And we also need to talk with the catgirls who were in the control room during the attack.”

Arthur nodded. 

“Maybe we should split up” Arthur suggested, “this way we get all the interviews done this morning and can focus on the technical evidence afterwards. I know they want us to interview all of them, but we should hurry up.”

“Good idea” Jürgen Schmidt replied, “we split up for the Astronauts and catgirls, but do the interview with the two AIs of the station together. I bet they will have more facts for us.”

* * *

“And then the alarm hit me, moments before the projectile impacted. I didn’t even had time to warn anyone, I am just happy that the shot hit. Unfortunately the other turrets were not in the right position.”

Arthur nodded and made a few additional nodes.

“Thank you Serina,” he said, “if you recognize something that might be important, contact us immediately. Cortana, do you want to add anything more?”

“No, I think you got everything we experienced during the attack” Cortana answered. “And you also have the full video of it for later analysis. If you have any questions about details just ask, we are both present all over the station.”

“We will do so” Arthur assured, “but lets have a look at the physical evidence now. I hope you have some news for us!”

Serina’s Avatar smiled and the door of the room opened to let in an Exocomp.

“Follow him to the main hall, I think the catgirls have assembled all the evidence there. Its not far.”

The main hall was just a few corridors away, a huge room separated into two areas by a large glasslike wall. As the group entered, a catgirl approached them.

“Hello, Cortana told me you would come. I am Vivio, I can show you the current status of our investigation.”

“Thank you” Jürgen Schmidt replied, “we are curious what you got. Will Cathy join us too?”

“Oh, Cathy is still sleeping. She organized the team that brought most of the fragments into this hall” Vivio explained. 

“But let me give you an overview what we have found.

The origin of the attack is far outside the ecliptics, it took the projectile hours to arrive at Pan.”

The room darkened and a holographic projection of Saturn and its moons appeared, marking Pan with a bright yellow ring. A tiny red dot floated far away of the planet.

“The red dot marks the place where the weapon had been placed” Vivio continued and the a small dot separated from the existing one and raced towards Saturn. Moments later the original marker began to expand into a red sphere.

“As you can see, only moments after the shot the weapon platform exploded. When we found it, it had had been scattered over an area of more than a lightsecond diameter!”

The projection zoomed onto the spherical area to show a widely distributed debris field.

“We placed reference buoys around the field and began to collect the parts, after recording their vector and spin. At the moment we have at least 78% of the original weapon system and all parts larger than a centimeter!”

“What’s about the other 20%” Ichikawa Zenigata asked.

“We are still looking for tiny splinters” Vivio admitted. “You could put Earth and Moon into this area without changing the Moons orbit, I think you can understand the problem to get them all. But we already have a rough image of the weapon system.”

The projection changed again, the particles raced back to the center until the frame of some kind of machine appeared. There were quite a few holes in the machine, marking places where the reconstruction wasn’t complete.

“This is the best reconstruction we have been able to come up with over the last day. As you can see our weapon system would barely fit into the trailer of a large truck or shipping container The structure suggests its some kind of mixed rail- and coilgun system, with some unidentified support infrastructure.

Still, we have a few parts we are not sure how they fit into the whole picture. There are quite a few metal loops and even some thick metal ropes, but no place to use the rope in the weapon.

The most interesting parts are splitters that might have been part of the rails for the projectile. They are made of a complicated mixture of elements, Cortana thinks they might be a hardtech superconductor. But as many parts of the weapon, they have been waved!”

Arthur nodded slowly.

“Thank you Vivio for this introduction. We will have to look at some of the parts ourselves, to get a feeling what might be important. Please run more parts through an analysis in your labs, maybe you will find something important.”

“We are just preparing the particle accelerator in the labs” Vivio agreed. “If you want to get a special part out of the room just call an Exocomp. But maybe it might be better you suit up and examine everything in vacuum, we don’t want to contaminate the parts.”

Arthur Nkomo looked at his two colleagues from Earth.

“Okay Gentlemen, lets find the needle in the haystack!”

* * *

“The solution is here, somewhere... I feel it!” Zenigata murmured as he twisted the controls of the holographic projection system again. “I just need to find it.”

When the catgirl had shown him and his colleagues the ‘reconstruction’, they had forgotten to mention that it was just one of the reconstructions they did together with their AI Cortana. One of dozens, each of them with an assigned probability value... and all of them with quite some guessing involved.

While the central mechanism was easy to recognize, the outer support structure was a mess. Too many tiny pieces that could be assembled into different configurations and none of them fitting perfectly.

They had all looked at the pieces for the last three days, giving small samples to the catgirls who provided an analysis of the material. The only big discovery was still the waved but hardtech superconductor.

A mixture of seven elements in a complex three dimensional lattice. Waved for some unknown additional effect. The catgirls never had seen something like this in Fenspace, it was just too difficult to make in large quantities. Superconductivity was easier to achieve with Handwavium.

They had sent a sample of it to Prometheus Forge with a Warsie courier, maybe they would be able to learn more about it this way.

“Just a few more combinations... I should really go to bed like Arthur and Jürgen” he said as he assembled the larger pieces of the support structure of the weapon into a new pattern. “No, thats still wrong, something is missing.”

A door behind him opened and a catgirl he didn’t recognized entered and sat down on the bank next to him.

“Hi, I am Mizuki” she introduced herself, “are you Ichikawa Zenigata?”

“Just a moment” he murmured and quickly finished his latest reconstruction attempt. “Damned, its wrong again... oh, hello Mizuki... yes, I am Ichikawa Zenigata from the Japanese National Police Agency.”

“Its already very late, ” she asked, looking curiously at him. “you are still working on your puzzle here?”

“Yes, it is late” Zenigata replied and nodded, “but someone has to get this job done. And I am pretty sure I saw something in this data... I just have to grab it!”

He smiled at the catgirl at his right and grabbed the controls in front of him again, starting another variation of his reconstruction attempts.

“May I ask you a question?” the catgirl asked and Zenigata sighed mentally.

“Another one? Okay.” he said, maybe getting a short break wasn’t that bad.

“Have you ever tried to throw handcuffs?”

Zenigata stared at Mizuki for a moment, then he started laughing loudly.

“No, I definitely have not” he said after he managed to stop laughing, “I think they are not good for hitting something at range.”

“Yes, I think you are right” the catgirl said and nodded, “a few of us tested it yesterday. They don’t fly well at all, but I thought you would know a trick!”

“Oh, you should not forget I am from Earth” he explained. “I had never any contact with Handwavium before this mission. I cannot throw handcuffs in any useful way, it just cannot be done.”

The catgirl looked thoughtful for a moment and nodded. Zenigata went back to work.

“Oh look there, this fits right into that hole” Mizuki suddenly said and pointed at the small holographic panel. The gesture based interface reacted instantly, shooting a few objects through the rest of the holographic image and scattering it all over the screen.

“Ups...”

“I am trying to work here” Zenigata said and rolled with his eyes. “I am happy for some company, but please do not touch the console.”

Just as he wanted to continue his work, the catgirl jumped up. “I will get myself a coffee. Do you want one too?”

She didn’t even waited for a response and raced out of the room.

‘Strange girl... but maybe I can now get my work done.’ he thought.

But just after a minute the catgirl was back with two large mugs of hot coffee.

“Here, I brought you a coffee too!” she said and put one of the mugs in front of him, directly into his holographic console. The catgirl grinned and sniffed at her coffee, purring loudly.

Zenigata took a few deep breaths to stay calm while looking at Mizuki who was squirrelly moving back and forth.

‘This one drank too much coffee’ he thought and put his coffee mug to the side, trying to salvage his current work while keeping an eye on his guest.

The catgirl suddenly began to giggle.

“Hey, I know where this part belongs to” she said and tried to reach for the control console again, but Zenigata quickly grabbed her wrist.

“What did I say about the console” he asked with a smirk, but Mizuki just giggled and instantly reached out with her other hand. It took a short brawl until he finally managed to hold her.

“You are a really naughty cat” he said, carefully trying not to begin laughing. Mizuki smiled happily and began to purr.

‘I am doomed’ he thought, ‘cat is on coffee overload and is enjoying this game. I need a creative solution to this, otherwise I will be always the Spoilsport from Earth here.’

He looked around and suddenly he began to grin himself. Carefully he twisted her arms on the back of the bench.

“So you think you have already won our little brawl” he asked and Mizuki grinned widely, visibly enjoying the attention she got.

*click* *click*

“Maybe then you shouldn’t have brought the cop your handcuffs” Zenigata continued as he locked her hands together behind a beam that was holding the back of the bench.

“Hee... cheater!” Mizuki protested as she failed to free her hands again.

“You see, now we can both work on our big puzzle without constantly fighting for the controls” Zenigata said, putting his left arm around the shoulders of the catgirl. “If you have a good idea you just have to say it. Sometimes two hands are one hand too much.”

Too much...

He blinked a few times as he looked at the holo screen in front of him.

“YES... too much! Thats it! Too much!” he shouted. Mizuki just gave him a puzzled look.

“You see, I have been trying to find the right place in the machine for a group of metal loops, but it always looks strange” he tried to explain excitedly. “One of them is not from the machine, thats why!”

He waved to an Exocomp who was sitting on a chair close to him. “Hey you... get me this seven loops and put them into a small box each” he said and marked them on the holoscreen, “I have to get them to your labs!”

The Exocomp beeped happily and rushed through the airlock into the room with the weapon system parts.

“Ahh, that was the key” Zenigata said and smiled at the catgirl. “Thank you very much.”

The Exocomp was quickly back with a stack of boxes. Zenigata took the boxes and rushed towards the door.

“I have to bring this to the labs, I will be back in a moment!” he said and left.

“Hey!” Mizuki shouted and looked around. “Our coffee will get cold.”

She tried to get her hands free again, then looked at the Exocomp.

“Do something, help me!”

The Exocomp beeped an acknowledgement and rushed out of the room, only to bring back two small hot plates. It snickered and put them below the coffee pots, then sat down on Mizuki’s lap.

“Traitor” the catgirl murmured.

* * *

“So what do you got?” Zenigata asked impatiently and the catgirl in front of him snickered.

“Hey, I just finished a first preliminary analysis... don’t expect all the details, I will have to run your samples through more test, maybe we will even put them into the accelerator later” she answered. “But I can tell you a few things about them.”

Zenigata nodded quickly.

“These six loops are made from the same high quality steel” the catgirl started explaining, “or at least from a very similar batch of steel. I have not identified all components of the alloy, but its high quality metal. Oh, and they are have been waved with some kind of stealth strain.

This seventh Loop is different, very different. The steel is simpler and contains mostly alloy components you can easily get in Fenspace. There is also some unidentified particles in the mixture... and its wavium looks like a typical space-proof steel wave.”

“Yes, YES!” Zenigata cried out. “I got it, I got it!”

“I hope its not contagious” the catgirl joked, “do you want to share what you got?”

“This might be our most important evidence at the moment!” Zenigata stated. “Its a part that does NOT belong to the weapon system we found. It might be a hint about who or what deployed that weapon system!”

Zenigata began to quickly walk up and down the room.

“We need a more specific analysis of this as soon as possible. Everything could be important, everything! And we need it very quickly before the trail gets even colder!”

“I will get together a team and start working on it at once, we should have more evidence tomorrow morning” the catgirl promised and Zenigata nodded.

“Good, very good... I have to call my co workers, they have learn about this right now!”

“It late in the night for you three, try to calm down a bit” the catgirl suggested, “you are behaving like someone on an overdose of coffee!”

“Coffee...” Zenigata blinked a few times. “Coffee? Oh dear, I forgot about Mizuki! I will have to go, continue with your analysis! And call my co-workers to meet me!”

* * *

Two sleepy looking men and a catgirl entered the room where Zenigata were again sitting in front of the holo-controls, the head of the dozing Mizuki on his lap.

“Ahh, good that you are here” he said excited and activate the holo emitters. “You really have to see what I found!”

Arthur Nkomo and Jürgen Schmidt looked to each and then at the sleeping catgirl. 

“Maybe you want to sent her away first?” Jürgen suggested, but Ichikawa Zenigata shook his head.

“I owe her a little bit, just let her sleep.” he said with a grin, then he pointed to the projector.

Cathy just grinned about his comment.

“Mizuki also gave me the hint I needed to spot an important piece of our puzzle.”

The projection of the weapon system rotated and a number of metal loops were highlighted.

“As you know the reconstruction of the central weapon is pretty good, but we have some uncertainty in the support structure below it. Our last guess was that we were missing a few parts, but we were wrong!”

The highlighted loops suddenly moved, most of them distributing themselves in a new regular pattern and one of them moving away from the weapon.

“Thats because this” Zenigata said and hold up a small plastic box, “this loop is not from the weapon system, its from the vehicle that transported the weapon system!”

Suddenly the two other inspectors were not looking sleepy anymore.

“Do you already have a preliminary analysis of it?” Arthur asked.

“Yes, I have. Its most likely steel that has been created here in space from asteroid ore. Its quality is much lower than the materials of the weapon system. It has been waved to be vacuum resistant with a common strain of handwavium. And...”

“And what?” Jürgen Schmidt asked, rolling his eyes about Zenigata’s show.

“And it has been contaminated during the waving. With some tiny amounts of red dust, dust from a planetary surface not far from here!”

“Mars... you want to tell us the transporter has been waved on Mars!” Arthur finally said. “This is really an interesting piece of evidence, the first one that might be useful for us.”

Zenigata nodded again.

“Yes. The catgirls from the lab told me a few minutes ago that they don’t think the steel has been used for a larger purpose built spaceship, but it could be from a waved vehicle.”

“Must be a pretty large waved vehicle, even most trucks are smaller than the weapon system.” Jürgen noted. “A truck or maybe a boat. Or a large plane.”

“Thats what I am hoping too,” Zenigata replied, “maybe someone who sells vehicles like this will recognize this part!”

“Sounds like looking for a needle in the haystack again” Jürgen joked, “don’t you think we should first uncover more evidence now that we got a hint what we are looking for?”

“No, we should move to Mars NOW... before the trail goes cold” Zenigata opposed Jürgens plan, “we cannot wait here.”

“We have to restock our Camping Car before we can think about flying back” Arthur said flatly. “And we would not be able to start anyways until we all got a good night of sleep. You know, nearly 17 hours of flying is more than a short trip.”

“I would like to help you” Cathy interrupted them for the first time, “we could easily borrow you one of our cars with a catgirl driving it... but even for a car its more than 11 hours to reach Mars. Thats a lot of travel time.”

Mizuki suddenly lounged and grinned.

“He could use the pinball,” she suggested, “it can cover the distance in seven hours.”

“You cannot seriously suggesting using that thing” Cathy said and rolled with her eyes. “Its tiny!”

“Excuse me,” Zenigata interrupted the two catgirls, “but what is the Pinball?”

Mizuki sat up and smiled.

“The Pinball of Doom is a prototype vehicle I have built with a few friends last year” she explained. “Its large enough for two persons and its incredible fast!”

“That sounds just perfect” Zenigata agreed, but Cathy was still skeptic.

“Wait until you have seen the beast” she suggested and stood up.

* * *

“Ladies and Gentlemen, I proudly present the PINBALL OF DOOM!”

Both catgirls and the three inspectors were standing around an unremarkable sphere of two and a half meter diameter. Smooth metal everywhere, no windows and not even small bumps.

“This is the spaceship you were talking about?” Arthur asked. “You are kidding us, right? This thing might be a nice toy or a drone, but an interplanetary spaceship?”

Mizuki hissed angrily at Arthur and stroke the surface of the metal sphere.

“You should not say something like this, vehicles have feelings too!” she spat out.

“Mizuki, I know you don’t build AI-equipped ships.” Arthur said and sighed.

“This is a personal built prototype! How do you know it has no AI?”

“Does it have an AI?”

Mizuki mumbled.

“No, it has not... but they still got feelings. And its the fastest craft on the whole station!”

She knocked on the surface of the sphere and half of it slowly clapped back to reveal the interior with the two seats. There wasn’t much more free space in the sphere except for the seats and their controls.

“Okay, I can see that this is a tight solution” Zenigata said with a grin. “At least the hatch is transparent from the inside. Why didn’t you built it a bit larger?”

“We cannot do so without an AI” Cathy quickly answered. “This is even a bit larger than we normally can do, it still has a few quirks we got rid of later. But Mizuki is right, its a damned fast vehicle. And in theory it could bring you to Mars.”

“In theory?” Zenigata asked carefully.

“Look at it” Arthur said, “its not even a car, its a tin can. Do you think anyone would want to sit inside this for eight hours?”

“Hey, the prewave space capsules of US and and Russia were smaller” Mizuki complained. She looked at Zenigata. “And you are not that large, it should work out fine.”

Cathy looked at Mizuki.

“If you are that excited about the craft, YOU will pilot it for our guest until you are back on the station.”

Mizuki blinked a few times.

“But... but... but we had to take out the coffee machine to get space for the fuel tanks!”

“Its your idea, you are responsible for it,” Cathy said and shook her head. “I am sure you will be able to find a thermos jug before you leave.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Late April 2018**

The hatch of the POD was slowly closing, hiding its two passengers behind a chromed wall of steel until not even a seam was visible anymore. But from the inside the space around the small spacecraft was still visible.

Mizukis hands were flying over the console in front of her, running through a final check of the craft. A few lights became green and with a smile she hit the ‘power up’ button. The karaoke machine in the middle console activated, the two microphones lit up, one with blue and one with orange lining and a text appeared on the main viewscreen.

‘Loading music, please wait...’

“Get the mike, this will be fun” Mizuki said to inspector Zenigata as the grabbed her microphone. “Have you ever done some Karaoke singing?”

“What?”

Zenigata looked at the catgirl for a few moments, not sure if she just made a joke.

“Hey, its one of the quirks of the POD. Without the Karaoke singing, it will not go fast!” Mizuki said defensively. “It will play the song once, then again with the text on screen. Hey, its not that difficult.”

Zenigata rolled with his eyes, but he grabbed the microphone in front of him as the music started to play. “For the mission,” he murmured. “at least the music could have been much worse.”

Quickly the ‘Pinball Wizard’ song ended for a first time and the music started again.

Zenigata sighed shortly and tried to follow the flow of the music. He could hear that Mizuki was definitely more practiced in singing.

‘Your team-score: 153 Advice: ask the catgirl for lessons.’ was on the display as the music finally ended.

“Wow” Mizuki said excited, “I was never able to get it above 89 alone... maybe teams get better scores?”

With a light vibration the engines of the POD came to life and a wave of bright blue energy raced through the cockpit and outward to the hull of the vehicle.

“Ohh... thats much brighter than during my tests” Mizuki said with a grin, grabbing the control stick. 

“Next station, Mars!” she cried and the POD raced out of the open airlock.

* * *

“So they both left for Mars this night” Arthur Nkomo asked and Cortanas avatar nodded.

“Yes, they two hours after you and Mr. Schmidt went back to your rooms. They will be entering the Mars orbit any minute and will land soon after.”

“Wait a moment” Arthur replied, “I remember Mizumi said something about eight hours to Mars, shouldn’t they still be hours away?”

Cortana chuckled.

“We are not sure, but the POD made a new speed record on the voyage to Mars, its running close to 19% lightspeed at the moment. Nobody expected this speed boost, so they have nearly finished their journey.”

Jürgen Schmidt gave Arthur a pat on the back.

“You see, it was a good idea to send the message to Mars yesterday” he said with a nod, “at least they got a warning about their visitors. So what is on OUR timetable for today?”

“We will hopefully get today a full analysis of the handwavium probe Zenigata found. And we have to look over all the pieces if we missed another important puzzle” Arthur said. “Cortana, can you make sure that our car is refueled and ready for a trip back to the inner system? If we find a good trail, I want to get there as soon as possible.”

“Should only take a few hours” Cortana said and nodded, “a little bit more if you want us to get some goods from the Warsies before you leave.”

* * *

“So what are you looking for Inspector Ichikawa Zenigata?”

Zenigata smiled while he tried to remember what Arthur had told him about Natsuko Aki before he left Jenga.

“Thanks that you have time to spare for me Inspector Aki, I am on an important trail of evidence at the moment and need help and advice” he answered. “We are looking for a large truck, most likely built here on Mars.”

“A truck... built on Mars” Natsuko Aki repeated, “I hope you have some more evidence.”

“Yes, I have... I have the minimum dimensions of the vehicle and I also know it has been built by cheap steel coming from the belt. It has been waved on Mars, most likely on the surface because it was contaminated with Mars dust during the process.”

He gave Inspector Aki a small data pad with a number of size estimates.

“The catgirls on Jenga said that its already a pretty large vehicle but made from cheap materials, so I hope its a really large truck and not a custom built vehicle.” 

He was aware that most of the evidence was still shaky.

“And we have this” he finally said and put a small box on the desk. “Its a waved part of the vehicle, so we hope the manufacturer recognizes it and we can verify the whole thing by comparing the Handwavium strain and material.”

Inspector Aki nodded slowly.

“Okay, that limits the number of manufacturers a little bit... but I will be honest, it still will be a pretty long list. But at least you got something to identify the craft when you find it.”

Zenigata shrugged.

“I have to try it, just sitting and waiting for the case to solve itself will not help. I also have a catgirl from Jenga with me that could handle the Handwavium measurements I think.”

“Good. I will work out a list of people you should ask here at Helium and close to the town.” Inspector Aki answered. “This will be the shortest list and maybe you get lucky. In the meantime I will try to get in contacts with a few friends on Mars, maybe we can pinpoint where your dust particles were coming from. I hope you are prepared to spend a lot of time visiting a lot of people.”

“Yes, I am” Zenigata just said. He had to find Mizuki to start their tour through Helium.

* * *

“Damned... another one who sold a few trucks but nothing that fits our evidence. Is every second Fen a car salesmen?”

Zenigata was sitting on a bench, looking to the police officer to his left.

“Fenspace is a little bit more personal and distributed than Earth” the officer chuckled, “but I think it would be much worse to visit all car salesmen in Tokyo, right?”

“Yes of course” Zenigata said and rolled with his eyes, “but thats something different. I think we are really close to make progress with the investigation, but now we are bogged down by looking for our car dealer.”

It was their third day in Helium and all of their visits at several known and semi-known car salesmen and truck-loving Fen had come up with nothing at all.

“Where is your catgirl anyways? I heard she arrived with you here on Mars, why isn’t she helping you with the legwork?”

“She isn’t my catgirl, she just brought me here to Mars” Zenigata answered, “and I think she got bored after the first day. I think she said that Marsbase Sara was more fun.”

The officer nodded.

“Yes, some catgirls just lack the ability to concentrate on one thing for a long time... especially when they become distracted. A few weeks ago we had someone here with a waved laserpointer, it was hilarious to watch the local catgirls reactions.”

* * *

“A few more days dealing only with car salesmen and I will become insane” Zenigata murmured as he arrived at his room in the evening. “This whole search feels like a huge waste of time, but we are so close... I sometimes think I just have to grab the evidence.”

Unfortunately he was still not a single step closer to solving the case. But at least he had learned that it was unlikely the truck had been waved and sold at Helium.

‘I will just look what Mizuki is doing and then get a shower’ he decided and knocked at the door of the apartment next to his own. The camera in the door light up for a moment and he heard a click as the door unlocked immediately.

“Mizuki, are you here” he asked carefully as he opened the door and took a look into the badly lit room. “The door just opened!”

The room behind the door was in a state of chaos.

Zenigata nearly stumbled about a strand of cables growing out of an opened panel next to the door. A stream of blue blinking lights ran over the ground through the cables between a number of electric circuit boards and a group of household devices. A trash can filled with empty fast food boxes and tin cans were standing next to an open microwave.

In an edge of the room he could see a pile of printouts with Catgirl Industries logos, on the right a large holographic display with piles of numbers running through was glowing in a dim red color. In the background he could hear a quiet humming.

In the middle of the small apartment room, in the only free space on the floor, Mizuki was sleeping on a thick blanket, her arms tightly wrapped around a large pillow. 

Just as Zenigata decided to come back later, a small bell rang out in the room and Mizuki began to stir.

“Just a few more minutes Nina” she whispered and yawned, turning over and got instantly tangled up in the cables next to her sleeping place. Finally she opened her eyes and sat up. “Oh, its you... hope I didn’t overslept the breakfast. What time is it?” She took a look through the room and to the closed windows. “What day is it?”

“Its evening, third day we spent on Mars” Zenigata said and chuckled. “I was getting worried when you didn’t showed up for three days... what has happened here, I had hoped that you would help me finding the maker of the truck!”

“Oh, at first I had planned to go with you through Helium... but then I had a crazy idea I wanted to try out first” Mizuki said and looked left and right. “So I bought a little bit of hardware in the local shops and started... hmm... well, I needed a bit more computer power. And I had to record a bit holo-tv.”

“Why didn’t you just asked, the local police could have supplied you with access to all the computer power you needed?” he asked while carefully stepping over the cables to the window. The red light of sunset finally lightened the room. “You remember that we are on an official mission, right?”

“Bah, borrowed equipment. That stuff never works right, it is no fun to use.” Mizuki replied, blinking a few times to get used to the light. “Its just not compatible with the way I like to do things.”

“So what DID you do in the last days?”

“Wait, I will show you” Mizuki replied and grabbed a VR helmet that was laying next to her sleeping place. 

The holoscreen suddenly flashed bright and filled the room with all kinds of holographic objects. Zenigata could see numerous clusters of machine code floating in the room, receiving data from outside sources, filtering them and putting some of it in some kind of data storage. On the blanket besides Mizuki he could see the holographic images of six Exocomps.

“Welcome to my part of the Grid” Mizuki said with a smile. “Took me some time to download the necessary data from Jenga through the PODs comlink, but as I said I like to work in a familiar environment.” Mizuki stood up and a wave of her hand she activated her holographic overlay. 

“Wake up my friends, we have more work to do!” she said and the six Exocomps came alive and began to float around the shape of her avatar. “Lets show our guest what we have done!”

Holographic code and data moved aside to make place for a video playback. Zenigata watched the video presentation of the ‘Catgirl Industries promotional Marsbase Sara competition’, then he looked back to Mizuki.

“You released the information about our evidence to the public? What did you really told them for this competition?” he asked slowly. “If the bad guys learn we are on their trail, they might vanish even more!”

“Calm down and listen, I didn’t released the evidence” Mizuki said annoyed, swiping the video away from the holographic screen. “The competition is about finding someone who owns a sample of Handwavium as close as possible to a randomly selected batch we collected a year ago. Oh, and you also get a price if you are the one who found the person with the right Handwavium.”

For more than a minute Zenigata remained quiet while he thought through Mizuki’s plan.

“Yes, I think it could work... the method is a bit strange, but you might have just saved us from days and days of walking through Marsbase Sara, looking for the right cars salesman” he finally said and smiled. “Do you already got results?”

Mizuki called up screen with statistics and images from persons.

“These three are our best hit, one of them entered the database last night... ehh, this morning” she explained. “One of them is very close to the data I provided, the other twos seem to be nearly exact matches to our probe. Maybe they use the same batch of Handwavium or got it from the same source. Or maybe its just the same Handwavium breed with different materials. We have to ask them and run their wavium through our taster.”

“So what are we waiting for, lets get to Marsbase Sara and talk to this people!” he finally said.

* * *

“A week lost, but at least we are starting to make progress.”

Eric Hunt sighed as he looked through the results of the latest survey. They had spend a couple of days checking their personal equipment and working on ‘evacuation plan’ in case of further attacks while the catgirls had set up a defense perimeter around Pan. Eric wasn’t sure what it was, but the catgirls didn’t want to give the attackers a second chance.

Yesterday the catgirls had finally declared Pan safe again and both astronauts from Earth and inhabitants of Jenga had descended onto the moon’s surface like a bee swarm exploring a picnic site.

They spent two days until they were sure they had got a complete picture of the situation. And now they had to decide what to do about it.

“We can help you making up the lost time” Cathy said, “but quite a bit of the material you already had on the moon has been damaged. I know you will get an additional supply run, but how much redundancy do you had in your plans?”

“Not enough Cathy, not enough” Eric answered and looked up from the survey data. “Even with the additional supplies a lot of structural parts for the station have been damaged. Luckily the more delicate equipment was still in containers. I have thought about my call from ESA in the last days and we will need even more help from you.”

Cathy’s ears twitched and she gave Eric a smile. “That sounds interesting, why don’t you explain what you have in mind? I mean your project has been planned with one foot nailed on the ground the whole time and the attack didn’t improved the situation.”

“Nailed to the ground?”

“Yes, nailed to the ground. I can understand that you wanted to stay away from the really quirky stuff, but you didn’t even had artificial gravity on your spacecraft.” Cathy said calmly. “I tell you, in all the years I have been up here I didn’t got a single report on a life support system that got quirky and unreliable. You spent years to develop the technology to get here instead of focusing on the extraction tech you needed for the Helium-3.”

“Cathy... do you think we don’t know this? Since the first waved spaceships there has been a hidden battle about using Handwavium at ESA. But ESA lost the battle every single times... and for a year or two we thought the EU would cancel the program completely.” Eric sighed, the Fen picture how Earth worked was always a bit limited. “So someone decided to become clever and flank the enemy, which brought us here to Saturn.”

“Okay, I can see that you would have got ... but how does this help you in the current situation. Its not that the situation will get better if you cannot provide Helium-3 for Earth.”

“Less thinking about breaking rules Cathy, more thinking about flanking” Eric said with a grin. He could see that Cathy was more thoughtful. “But there is something else we need to discuss. I need you to get us enough materials to repair the damage and finish the station. And I have been informed that we cannot expect more money from Earth for this.”

Cathy did not looked that happy about the last part.

“But I have a different proposal for you” Eric continued, “one that you might find interesting.”

Cathy listened carefully to his proposal and her eyes became wide.

* * *

“Are you sure they are living in the same flat?” Mizuki asked. 

“Yes, the Space Patrol officer for Marsbase Sara was sure about this.” Zenigata said and nodded. “It might spare us a lot of time being able to talk with both of them simultaneously.”

“I wonder if they are related to each other” Mizuki mused, “they look quite similar. Ahh, here we are!”

Zenigata knocked at the door. A few moments later the door was opened from the inside by a man. 

“Yes, what can I do for you?” the man asked and looked at Zenigata and then at Mizuki. Suddenly he began to grin. “Wait, you are the one from Catgirl Industries who announced the competition a few days ago, right?”

Mizuki nodded with a smile.

“Yes... YES... YEEEEES!” he shouted and looked over his shoulder. “Did you hear it, I won! Now I will easily beat you!”

Zenigata waited a moment until the man calmed down. 

“So you are Mr. Mark Thompson?” Zenigata finally asked. “We would like to talk with you.”

Mark Thompson instantly cooled down a bit. “And who are you?”

“This is Ms. Mizuki from Catgirl Industries” Zenigata replied, “and I am Ichikawa Zenigata from the Japanese National Police Agency, currently working together with Space Patrol... and we need your help.”

“Japanese police?” Mark Thompson said surprised, “does this mean the whole competition was a fake? What do you want?”

“No, no... the competition is real, I promise!” Mizuki quickly said, “But we really would like to talk with you... and with a Mr. Ronald White.”

Mark stared at her for a moment.

“No... just tell me that was a joke... please... no...” he said, looking very unhappy. “My first moment of triumph and you tell me... tell me that I have to share it?”

Mizuki and Zenigata looked at each other, unsure what to reply to this.

Mark shrugged finally and waved them into his flat. “Just come in, I will call him and you can explain why you want to talk to us.”

He brought them into the small living room of the flat.

“Just sit down, I will be back in a moment” he said and vanished through another door. A moment later he came back with a similar looking man.

“Ronald, these are Ms. Mizuki from Catgirl Industries and Mr. Ichikawa Zenigata from the Japanese police” he introduced both of the visitors. “And this here is Ronald, my brother.”

“Maybe you can explain this” Zenigata said, “we were surprised both winners working at different places but living at the same address... but we had no clue you were related to each other.”

Both of them grinned.

“That is simple... we both changed our Surname when we moved to Mars a few years ago, we wanted to make it harder to connect us to our families back on Earth.” Mark explained. “And because we had a heated discussion at that time, we choose different names.”

“Heated discussion?” Zenigata asked.

“I hope you understand,” Ronald replied, “we are both Gearheads... but I am a Robotech fan and my brother Mark is a Macross fan.”

“Ouch!” Zenigata said and made a face. “I understand your trouble, that can really hurt.”

Both brothers grinned again.

“So we finally know how you could enter two strains of Handwavium that similar” Mizuki said, “I fear you will have to share the price, you entered the same strain twice.”

“But maybe we should focus a bit more about why I am here” Zenigata interrupted Mizuki. “We are looking for a vehicle, a waved large truck capable of long range flight. We know how large it was and we have a fragment of it waved with the handwavium strain you seem to own.”

“A truck you say? We have sold a few waved trucks over the year.” Mark answered thoughtful. “We import them on demand through a friend on Earth and wave them, it helps to make enough money to pay for our work here.”

“Good... we are looking for a truck with at least this dimensions for cargo” Zenigata continued and showed them a diagram, “which most likely used this loops to fix the cargo to the floor.”

“The birthday present?” The two brothers looked at each other for some time and nodded. “Yes, thats it.”

“As I said before, we have not waved that many trucks since we arrived on Mars. Only one of them was as large as the one you describe.” Mark said, “We got a contract from someone from the US, he wanted a waved truck for a friend. Was exported back to Earth over Luna a few months ago.”

“Are you sure about this,” Zenigata asked, “do you have met your business partner?”

“No, we have not... but it was an US email address, and the bank was coming from a US bank account!” Mark said defensively. “I hope his friend did not wrecked something important in Japan with the truck.”

“Thats not your concern at the moment” Zenigata pushed forward, “but we need everything you still know about the truck. Photos, plans, color, engine... everything could help!”

“I think we should call up the local Patrol office to confirm there is an investigation” Ronald interrupted Mark. “I am sorry Mr., but you are out of your jurisdiction and I would like to confirm your story.”

* * *

“Please wait, link is being established... authentication in progress.”

Ichikawa Zenigata was sitting in a shielded communication room of Space Patrol at Marsbase Sara, waiting for the link to Arthur Nkomo’s vehicle at Jenga being established. Small status lights of the encryption module were switching from red to green one by one until the screen finally lit up. 

“Good morning Arthur, good morning Jürgen.”

“Hello Zenigata,” Arthur Nkomo replied. “I hope you have good news for us.”

“Yes, I have... Mizuki and me managed to find the Fen who imported and waved the truck we were looking for” Zenigata replied. “We don’t have a hard link who bought the vehicle, but we have everything else. Pictures, model, performance parameters. And we know that it was sent to the Moon to be collected by the customer.”

Arthur thought about this for a moment and nodded.

“Yes, that is really good news. I think we need to involve specialists from the White Tower right now” he decided and pushed a few buttons on his console to activate a conference call. “Great work Zenigata, now its time the Patrol earns their pay.”

The screen on both ends split in the middle, making space for a third communication partner.

“Jeff Patson, Data Mining... what can I do for you Mr. Nkomo?”

“Hello Mr. Parson, I hope you got the memo about my current case?”

“Yes i got it” Patson acknowledged. “So tell me what we need to dig up for you.”

“I need your group to find a vehicle involved in my case” Arthur answered. “The vehicle has only been in Fenspace for a few month so I hope you can find it quickly.”

“I am transmitting you everything we know about the vehicle” Zenigata continued, “the last known position of the vehicle was the Moon, two months ago. It was parked there on a public parking lot to be collected by the contractor.”

“I just got your data package, that should be enough to start hunting for the vehicle. I assume this is a priority request?” he asked back and Arthur instantly nodded.

“Yes, it is. We need to find the people who use this truck at the moment, as fast as we can” Arthur replied, “you don’t need to call me back when you found it, we will come to the White Tower in the next 24 hours.”

After the connection to the White Tower had been shut down Arthur looked at Zenigata again.

“We will be leaving Jenga in the next hour, I expect to meet you at the Tower tomorrow. Hopefully Section 7 will already have found some data when I arrive” Arthur said. “I will also send a request to Section 6 to keep one of their FESWAT teams on standby, as soon as we know where to strike I want to be able to do so.”

“See you at the White Tower” Zenigata replied.

* * *

Jeff Patson sighed as he turned off the external link and switched over to the White Towers cyberspace.

“I don’t know why people always think its easy to find data quickly” he murmured, “without us they wouldn’t even know where to start.”

The Data Mining group was officially part of Space Patrols technical support section, the little brother of Space Patrols hacker and codebreaker teams. While their job involved no exciting cyber combat or hacking, most people had just no idea about the scope of Data Mining’s job.

Fenspace produced an incredible amount of data each day, most of it totally boring and useless for everyone. Until someone came up with a request that redefined ‘useful’ for the last couple of months... or years.

“Okay my friends, we have a new job... priority request from Great Justice.” he said after he logged in to White Towers cyberspace. “I am uploading you the description of a vehicle... we have to find it and its owners. We have to look both through our own recordings and external sources.”

“That sounds like some fun” one of the AI’s replied, “what are our parameters? Any loops to jump through?”

“None this time. Cameras, traffic sensors, video blogs, look at everything that stores sensor data which could be useful for us” Jeff said. “If a Fen put something on the web that is useful for us, take a look at it. I don’t think you can move a vehicle to the Moon and back without hitting a dozen recording devices.”

“What is about external databases? Shall we ask the Hackers to take a look at them?”

“Only if it is necessary, we have pretty good official backing for this. Contact the Supers, we need to access their recordings too.” Jeff answered after a moment. “If they give you access or coordinate with you we are happy with it.”

He could see that the AIs were already looking forward to the challenge.

“Oh, one more thing... if you uncover something keep me informed. Section 6 already told me they are on standby to kick in someones door. So if you need some active surveillance, they might be willing to organize it for us.”

* * *

“Our target is the main belt asteroid called 2685 Masursky.”

The planning room of FESWAT Unit 2 was filled to the last place as the Sergeant explained the mission.

“A stealthed recon flight confirms that the asteroid is primarily made from stone and has been mined to some extent, which left it with a series of tunnels and caves. According to the intel data there is no atmosphere inside.

We have only limited data about what to find inside.

First, we identified three persons which are involved.”

The picture of the holoprojector changed and three infosheets appeared.

“Alexander Ward, Miriam Fisher and Norman Fox. We think that all of them are originally US citizens. No known biomods, no known combat abilities, no known connections to major Factions or organizations. They are active in the ‘Red Mars’ movement and are vocal opponents of any kind of terraforming. Up to this point Patrol had them classified as insane but harmless.”

A hand in the room went up. “Commander, we are taking the whole team to grab these three jokers?”

“Yes we are. Yesterday I would have told my boss the same. I will come back to your comment later.

The only living space in the asteroid we know about is a Whistler Container type B. A few rooms, a parking lot for a compact car and an airlock. The weapon system they used to attack Pan doesn’t even fit into this container.”

The commander looked through the room.

“I am pretty sure we are missing more than a few facts, but that is all we got. Maybe there are more people on the asteroid, maybe these three sniffed too much Wavium last year and became full Mads.

We cannot afford to wait, we have to strike quickly. We go in with the whole team, the Clipper as as external backup and a Roughrider squadron to make sure no one gets out. If we see that its too much for us, we bail out and call the cavalry.

One last thing, we need these terrorists alive. We need answers, not dead bodies... any questions?”

* * *

Arthur Nkomo was sitting together with his two Earth co-workers in a different meeting room.

“I still would have liked to be there when we arrest this terrorists” Zenigata said and sighed. “Somehow its annoying to know that the grand final will happen without us.”

Arthur rolled with his eyes.

“You know the drill... this is a job for specialists, there is no way we would let someone without zero-g combat experience on this mission” he replied. “Calm down, we will get all the data they acquired during the raid. And they will bring back all prisoners directly to the White Tower, so we can interrogate them.”

“Do Japanese SWAT teams allow other personnel to accompany them on a mission” Jürgen Schmidt asked with a smirk on his face.

“No, they do not... yeah okay, I will shut up. But still, it would have been nice to see your people doing it.” Zenigata said. “Any news about this other men who used the truck?”

It had taken Data Mining only a few hours to gather all data about the truck standing on its parking slot. It had been taken away twice by different people.

The second one had been Norman Fox. His picture and the data from Kandors traffic control system had been the first evidence that had given the Patrol a clue where to find their current targets.

But the first person who had taken the truck and brought it back a few days later was a mystery. He had arrived in a small compact car and had left with the same car again. Neither the car nor the person had been found in any other data source Space Patrol had been looking into.

“I hope the interrogation will give us some insight what is going on” Arthur said. “This smells a lot like someone making sure there is no connection between him and this group. But who knows, maybe we'll get lucky.”

* * *

“Tactical links coming online, Unit 2 disembarking.”

The Tactical Support room of Unit 2 in the belly of the Roger Murtaugh was dimly lit by the monitors on the consoles, displaying the asteroid 2685 Masursky and the members of Unit 2. Twelve points of light leaving the safety of the stealthed hull and floating over to the surface of the asteroid towards a tunnel entry into the interior.

“Minimal surface gravity, no sensors detected... going in!”

Tunnels walls appear on the screen as the first members of Unit 2 enter the asteroid. Naked dark stone, nothing that suggests someone had been in this tunnel in the last years. Slowly Unit 2 moves forward, constantly safeguarding against any kind of surprise attack.

“Smaller tunnel branching off from the main tunnel.”

The operators quickly check the data of the secondary tunnel. ‘Too small for the Whistler Container, wrong angle to get a truck into’ they decide and advise Unit 2 to advance along the main tunnel.

“We have reached a former mining area, completely empty. Multiple tunnels visible.”

The operators watch as Unit 2 spread out and begin to examine the other tunnel entrances. One by one the tunnels are visited by four green dots, checked out for any kind of evidence and equipped with a small sensor.

“Operation, this is Team 3. We found a small device, looks like a waved Nav-Beacon!”

Pictures of devices begin to run over the screen until a match appears. Moon built reactive navigation beacon, waved wifi interface and battery cell. Civil technology, sold in large quantities at Kandor.

“Team 3, place it in a Faraday Box. All Unit 2, proceed through this tunnel!”

Unit 2’s position markers move forward again, following the curved tunnel deeper into the asteroid. Slowly the infrared levels begin to increase. The tunnel finally opens into another cave, but this one dimly lit by a group of light bulbs.

“Operation, we found the truck and the Whistler Module. Still no enemy activity!”

One team begins moving to secure the truck but the rest of Unit 2 carefully surround the Module and check its only airlock. One by one all members of Unit 2 signal that they are ready as a plastic airlock inflates and the hacker box connects to the doors lock.

“Operation to Unit 2, you are cleared to go!”

The outer door flashes open as its control system is overridden and Unit 2 storms through the airlock into the main room of the Module. Target 2, Miriam Fisher, appears on the screen, working on a computer terminal. She open her mouth, staring with wide eyes at the intruders.

“Space Patrol! You are under arrest!”

A taser dart hits Target 2 before she can even scream.

“Shit, its the cops!”

Target 1, Norman Fox, shouts and ducks behind a desk. He tries to grab a device on his desk but before anyone can recognize if it is a weapon or not, two taser darts hit and paralyze him instantly. Unit 2 races through the room to the doors at the back and forces them open. More taser fire can be heard.

“Operation, this is Leader. All targets are down, area secured.”

“Mission accomplished.”

* * *

“So why is the Director of Europol attending the Fenspace Convention” Commissioner Kirk Russell asked. “I don’t think it is common for you to attend foreign political meetings.”

The director nodded.

“Officially I am here to talk about the Liaison treaty between the European Union and the Convention for further collaboration in crime fighting. The operation at Pan will become more and more important for us in the next years, so we would like to have a head start this time.”

“I heard that Mr. Jürgen Schmidt has agreed to become the first Liaison officer with us?” the Commissioner asked. “Not that we would disagree, his first joined investigation has been pretty successful.”

“Yes, that was one of the reasons he was asked to do the job” the Director of Europol confirmed. “Someone decided now that he already had experience dealing with the Fen and Space Patrol, he should continue to do the job. I have also heard the National Police Agency in Japan is thinking in similar ways, so you might also see Mr. Ichikawa Zenigata again.”

“Good to hear that, he raised quite some rumors with his investigation at Helium and Marsbase Sara, together with this catgirl. Personal contact and being know is an important part of working in Fenspace” Kirk replied. “I will ask our technical staff, I think we can easily provide a secure Interwave Link between your headquarter in The Hague and the White Tower.

But you said officially... so you have a second reason to come to Coruscant?”

“Yes, I have... a week ago Europol was contacted by Allan Bossert, the ESA Director General. His team of internal investigators analyzed the Aurora specific evidence you gathered from the terrorists and they found something interesting.”

He opened a small suitcase, took out a ring binder and put it on the table.

“This is a copy of the sensor data of our spaceships you found with the terrorists. A highly detailed scan. We thought it was done when the ships left Earth together for their first voyage to Saturn. Unfortunately this is wrong, they are an elaborate fake.”

“A fake?” Commissioner Russell raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“Like I said, the plans are very detailed, showing quite a bit of internal structure of the crafts. Unfortunately the crafts were never built like this.” He opened the binder and pointed to one of the pages. “While ESA had planned to mount the fuel pipes in this way, they discovered a structural problem while assembling the crafts at their station on Nouveau Paris. The engineers had to change the layout.

This is not a sensor scan... this is a fake, based on a set of plans that were only available internally to ESA and JAXA, they were not included in the general project plans. Which means there is someone on Earth involved in the attack. Someone with enough resources to steal this plans. And maybe someone why also has a reason and the abilities to build and deploy the weapon system that was used against Pan.”

“That fits well with some analysis results we got from the weapon system.” Commissioner Russell agreed. “Some of the materials are very complex and totally unusual for Fen construction. We try to keep an eye on Earth based factions activity in Fenspace, but we are not aware of even a hint that one of them has been involved in the terror attack.”

“Which means you might have missed someone.”

* * *

“It is great you had time to come to our party, I had not believed you would travel all the way to Saturn again” Mizuki said. “You must have awful much to do for work these days!”  
The day of the Aurora Station Opening Party’, nearly half a year after the attack on the icy moon, was over and everyone had the chance to get a full night of sleep again. Jenga had frozen its internal clock at midnight until the party was over, so it was still ‘late in the morning’ at the moment.

“The first few months with my new job were really chaotic, but things calmed down to a reasonable level after that” Ichikawa Zenigata replied. “Working together with Space Patrol and the Fen on Coruscant is... interesting. Different than what I had to do back in Tokyo but interesting.”

Both of them were sitting in the Cafeteria of Jenga with their breakfast. Jenga would leave the Saturn system later that day, so most Astronauts of the Aurora Station and the other party guests enjoyed to chance to eat together with their hosts.

“Our flight from Saturn to Mars was really cool” Mizuki continued, “I would have never guessed my POD would become that fast. Just cool, we have to do this again!”

“It got us to Mars quickly when I had to get there” Zenigata said and chuckled. “It was really a nice little craft.”

Mizuki stared at him with big eyes for a moment, then she rushed to Zenigata and gave him a tight hug, purring loudly. 

“You are the first one who liked the POD” she said happily, “the other catgirls who helped building it are always argue about it quirks.”

Zenigata sighed mentally but kept quiet and waited until the catgirl calmed down again.

“I have to visit my lab and look how much of the PODs Handwavium I have left” she suddenly said, “maybe I can make another one for you if you really like it!”

“Hmm... I like the idea that the POD is an unique craft and will always think fondly about it.” Zenigata replied, “but I am not sure I would be able to use a POD of my own enough, because I will often need more space when I travel. But if I need a small but crazy fast craft in the future, may I just call you?”

He could see that Mizuki wasn't that happy about the answer, but finally she nodded.

“Just one question, did you tell the two brothers on Mars that the POD was karaoke powered?”

“I might have slipped that accidently” Zenigata admitted. “I hope that wasn’t that bad, I didn’t felt it was a secret.”

“Oh, it wasn't a secret, but it explains a lot. It took them three months to decide what kind of project they would like to get our assistance.” Mizuki answered. “Of course it was always about some transformable robot, but they argued over the Macross versus Robotech thing forever!”

“That's an important issue” Zenigata agreed with a grin, “you should not pretend it doesn’t matter.”

“Fandom can be really a pain with some Fen, but in the end one of the brothers made an argument that the other one could not refute.” Mizuki chuckled. “Macross has better music. So after all this time they settled on something from Macross Frontier... but in Macross Frontier most of the show is about space fighters and singing!”

“Yes, that makes a lot of sense” Zenigata agreed, “so when they started working on it, they remembered me talking about a catgirl that owes them a favor.”

“Yes, exactly... we really had a great time and I will return there in a few weeks to help them finishing the project... I will send you an email when we are done, maybe you can visit us!”

On the other side of the cafeteria Eric Hunt and Cathy were sitting at a small table.

“Another party over... I sometimes think you are all enjoying this way too much” Eric Hunt said with a smirk. “I am not surprised that some people on Earth think you are a bit crazy.”

“Yes we do, is that a crime? Why do something if you don’t enjoy what you do?” Cathy replied. “And I like ‘a bit crazy’... not being a bit crazy would mean you are boring normal, never rushing out to do something really new and exciting! Isn't your whole mission also a bit crazy?”

“Okay, you got this point. The Aurora mission was a little bit crazy and it got more crazy after the attack when we had to start improvising.” Eric Hunt had to admit. “Someone will go really crazy when they compare the original plans with all the small details we had to change, but that is not my problem. They got what they wanted... The Aurora Station is ready for autonomous operation, completely without Handwavium. Thats all they care about, that and the Helium-3.”

“Yes, if you see it this way you are right” Cathy said and chuckled. “Do you plan to tell them about the second station on Pan?”

“Maybe later, after we delivered the first Helium-3” Eric Hunt replied with a big grin. “It’s not that important.”

“If you have any trouble with our Module, just give us a call.”


End file.
